Journal articles on the topic 'RELIGION / Christianity / Methodism'

Abstract John Wesley (1703-91）is known as the founder of Methodism in his time of Oxford University’s Scholar. However, about his Methodical religious theory, he got more spiritual and important influence from other continents not only Oxford in Great Britain but also Europe and America. Through Wesley’s experience and awakening in those continents, Methodism became the new religion with Revival by the spiritual power of “Holy Grail”. By this research using Multidisciplinary approach about the study of Legend of Holy Grail’s Knight, - from King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table in the Medieval Period, and in 18th century Wesley, who went to America in the way on ship where he met the Moravian Church group also called Herrnhut having root of Pietisms, got important impression in his life. After this awakening, he went to meet Herrnhut supervisor Zinzendorf (1700-60) in Germany who had root of a noble house in the Holy Roman Empire, - and to Legend of Holy Grail’s Knight Opera “Parsifal” by Richard Wagner at Bayreuth near Herrnhut’s land in the 19th century, Wesley’s Methodism is able to reach new states with the legend, such as the historical meaning of Christianity not only Protestantism but also Catholicism. I wish to point out Wesley’s Methodism has very close to Legend of Holy Grail’s Knight. In addition, after the circulation in America, in the late 19th century Methodism spread toward Africa, and Asian Continents. Especially in Japan, by Methodist Episcopal Church South, Methodism landed in the Kansai-area such international port city Kobe. Methodist missionary Walter Russel Lambuth (1854-1921) who entered into Japan founded English schools to do his missionary works. Afterward, one of them became Kwansei-Gakuin University in Kobe. Moreover, Lambuth such as Parsifal with Wesley’s theories went around the world to spread Methodism with the Spirit’s the Legend of Holy Grail’s Knight as World Citizen.

Reflecting on the early endeavours of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) following its establishment in 1699, John Chamberlayne, the Society’s secretary, confidently noted the ‘greater spirit of zeal and better face of Religion already visible throughout the Nation’. Although Chamberlayne clearly uses the language of revival, through the nineteenth century, many historians of the Evangelical Revival in Britain saw it as a ‘new’ movement arising in the 1730s with the advent of the evangelical preaching of the early Methodists, Welsh and English. Nineteenth-century historians often confidently propagated the belief that they lived in an age inherently superior to the unreformed eighteenth century. The view that the Church of England from the Restoration to the Evangelical Revival was dominated by Latitudinarian moralism leading to dead and formal religion has recently been challenged but was a regular feature of Victorian scholarship that has persisted in some recent work. The traditional tendency to highlight the perceived dichotomy between mainstream Anglicanism and the Revival has served to obscure areas of continuity such as the fact that Whitefield and the Wesleys intentionally addressed much of their early evangelistic preaching to like-minded brethren in pre-existing networks of Anglican religious societies and that Methodism thrived as a voluntary religious society. Scores of historians have refuted the Victorian propensity to assert the Revival’s independence from the Church of England.

ABSTRACT ‘Methodism was born in song’, so says the opening sentence of the preface to the 1933 edition of the Methodist Hymn Book. That edition, inherited from the Wesleyan Missionary Society from the early nineteenth century, is still in use in many Methodist Churches of British descent in Africa. Using the West African country of Ghana as a case study, this article reflects on select ‘hymns of the Holy Spirit’ in the hymn book. Through these hymns of the Spirit, we capture some of the main theological underpinnings of Wesleyan pneumatology as understood within an African context in which Methodism remains a formidable denomination. The influence of Methodism on Christianity in Africa has been through its hymn-singing culture. The Wesleyan theology of the Holy Spirit as the source of regeneration, sanctification, and empowerment is evident in the pneumatological hymns in the collection.

With more and more evidence coming to light of the cultural genocide inflicted by settler Christians upon Indigenous peoples through the residential school system, it is hard to see how Christian and Indigenous identities can hold together in the current Canadian context. Nevertheless, many in the Indigenous community within Canada continue to call themselves Christian, and Indigenous Christians continue to provide important leadership for the Canadian church. This phenomenon cannot be properly understood or appreciated without knowledge of the longstanding tradition of Indigenous Christianity and its origins. Beginning in 1829, Indigenous leadership within the Methodist Episcopal church in Upper Canada used the Christian Guardian to tell the story of their work among Indigenous communities. These Indigenous accounts of mission work provide a window into how early Indigenous converts to Methodism understood their faith and its meaning within the context of Canadian colonial Christianity, an understanding that differed in significant ways from that of their settler co-religionists. The early Indigenous narrative found in the settler Methodist publication emphasized Indigenous leadership, Indigenous language and the compatibility of Indigenous and Christian spiritual teachings. This study provides an important perspective which confirms and challenges contemporary views on Indigenous Christianity in Canada and helps to reimagine the past, present and future of Christianity in postcolonial contexts.

Methodist studies of the last four decades have insisted that Methodism be seen as a distinctive intellectual tradition with its own integrity. These studies have corrected the excesses of an earlier experiential interpretation. Although some may still characterize Wesley's Christianity as “almost totally devoid of intellectual content,” the subjects of Wesley, of Methodism, and of the American Holiness Movement can now no longer be reduced to merely an unreflective warm-hearted piety. Current studies have especially highlighted several distinct Wesleyan theological developments. These include the displacement of election and predestination by a religious assurance from the witness of the spirit, the tension between salvation by holy living and salvation by faith alone, an emphasis on vital Christian experience in theological reflection, and especially the development of a Protestant understanding of Christian perfection or holiness. As Henry Rack states, Wesley “softened the hard edges of Calvinism” with an Arminian accent and moved the center of Protestantism so that justification became “the door into the pilgrimage of holiness” rather than the Lutheran cradle or the Calvinist promise. Wesley's prominence in Jaroslav Pelikan's history of Christian doctrine indicates the growing acceptance of this Methodist intellectual history.

Abstract This paper aims to explain patterns of Charismatic revival by utilizing a quantitative lens on church growth in Singapore during the mid-1900s. The research digitized and then analyzed data from the archives of the Methodist Church of Singapore between the years 1889 and 2012. The annual conference reports recorded several variables over this 123-year period such as church membership, baptisms, and professions of faith. In recent years, it also records the average Sunday attendance at each of 23 churches throughout Singapore. This paper presents a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the historical data and concludes that, in line with predictions from the cognitive science of religion (CSR), religious revival can serve to energize religious communities that are primarily reliant on rituals with high frequency and low-arousal (see Whitehouse 2004). Typically, high frequency and low-arousal rituals allow for high levels of consensus and social identification among large religious groups. However, as a byproduct of their high frequency and low-arousal, the repeated rituals are predicted to suffer from the effects of tedium, which lowers motivation for the information presented during the rituals and can have negative effects on group cohesion. The ethnographic and historical records investigated within the theory of Divergent Modes of Religiosity (DMR) have suggested that short bursts of reinvigoration can be used to revitalize motivation in doctrinal religions. While the data from Singapore’s Clock Tower Revival events in the 1970s suggest that such an event did occur, the DMR, as traditionally formulated, is unable to capture the dynamics of Singaporean Christian demographics because 1) it does not clearly account for the high number of converts who have entered the religion and 2) it cannot account for the sustained presence of high-arousal rituals in the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in Singapore since the Clock Tower Revival. Demographic data from Singapore, in particular the Singaporean Methodist church, complicate CSR’s current approach to tedium because it appears that the religious communities in Singapore have not only sustained their motivation, they have grown since the initial revival period in the 1970s, suggesting that new amendments to our approach to tedium in doctrinal religions may be appropriate (Lane, 2021, 2019; Lane, Shults, & McCauley, 2019). As such, this paper discusses how the data from the Methodist church in Singapore are more easily explained through the use of a new approach toward understanding social cohesion in religions that relies on a cognitive (i.e., information processing) approach that links social and personal information schemas with rehearsal, memory, and personal experiences. The theory also aims to formulate its claims with sufficient specificity to be modeled in computer simulations (Lane 2018, 2013) to be further tested against other historical groups, which this paper discusses in regards to future directions for the research.

The postcolonial era has brought a renewed appreciation of African Indigenous Religion and culture among some Southern African Christians. However, because of Southern Africa’s colonial religious heritage, some African Christians are opposed to a constructive engagement with African religiosity and practice. Others seem to operate with a double consciousness—participating in African Indigenous religious ceremonies and holding African religious beliefs during the week while claiming to be Christians on Sunday. This article engages the Methodist Church of South Africa’s consideration of ukuthwasa and the practice of being a Traditional Healer in light of some instances of ‘double consciousness’. It argues that this engagement is a form of religious pluralism that requires intentional and critical consideration. After introducing the concept of ukuthwasa and recent discussions around being both a Christian minister and a Traditional Healer, some examples of African Christian double consciousness among some members of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa are examined. Based on this critical reflection, some possibilities that Christian engagements with African religion and culture might offer for the contextualisation and decolonisation of Southern African Christianity are presented.

Christianity and circus entered the Australian landscape within a few decades of each other. Christianity arrived with the First Fleet in 1788. Five years later, Australia’s first church was opened. In 1832, the first display of the circus arts was given by a ropewalker on the stage of Sydney’s Theatre Royal. Fifteen years later, Australia’s first circus was opened in Launceston. Nevertheless, Australia’s historians have tended to overlook both the nation’s religious history and its annals of popular entertainment. In their new antipodean setting, what did Christianity and circus offer each other? To what extent did each accommodate the other in terms of thought and behaviour? In raising these questions, this article suggests the need to remove the margins between the mainstreams of Australian religious and social histories. For the argument of this article: 1) the term “religion” will refer to Christianity, specifically its Roman Catholic and principal Protestant manifestations introduced in Australia, Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist; and 2) the term “circus” will refer to the form of popular entertainment, a major branch of the performing arts and a sub-branch of theatre, as devised by Astley in London from 1768, and first displayed in the Australia in 1847.

The British educated classes have long worried and fantasized about working-class religious belief and unbelief. Anglican churchmen feared Methodist “enthusiasm” in the eighteenth century, radicalism in the aftermath of the French Revolution, and urban, industrial irreligion after the 1851 Religious Census on churchgoing. In a mirror image of these old anxieties, most labour historians have wished away Christianity in the twentieth century. The long-standing shared socialist teleology of Marxists and Fabians leads to the modern, socialist labour movement. In this Marxian take on secularization theory, a new, more cohesive proletariat or singular “working class” forms, with an anti-capitalist, “socialist” consciousness reflected in the political, trade union, and co-operative institutions of the “labour movement”. Suddenly, economic, social, and political history find a single, unified subject. At the level of belief, socialism displaces those old Victorian pretenders for working-class hearts and minds: conservatism, liberalism, and Christianity. Sometime between 1914 and 1918, the Christian religion disappears from ordinary lives, as in Selina Todd's recent, The People, where popular religious faith is barely worth talking about.

The article examines the linguistic ways of describing Orthodoxy by Marcin Bielski in the third edition of his Chronicle, dated to 1564. The analyses show that Bielski uses various names for this religion, distinguishing between the Greek and Ruthenian faith, that he names the Orthodox in many ways, provides details about the manner of baptism, the Eucharist, places of worship and the veneration of saints, and the mission of St. Cyril and Methodius, and evokes the reasons for the split of both churches or attempts to resolve it.

The history of Christianity in Africa contains selected information reflecting patriarchal preoccupations. Historians have often downplayed the contributions of significant women, both European and indigenous African. The names of some significant women are given without details of their contribution to the growth of Christianity in Africa. This article considers the contributions of Peggy Hiscock to the growth of Christianity in Zambia. Hiscock was a White missionary who was sent to serve in Zambia by the Methodist Church in Britain. She was the first woman to have been ordained in the United Church of Zambia. Hiscock established the Order of Diaconal Ministry and founded a school for the training of deaconesses in the United Church of Zambia. This article argues that although the nineteenth- and twentieth-century missionary movement in Africa is associated with patriarchy and European imperialism, there were European women missionaries who resisted imperialism and patriarchy both in the Church and society.

This article, which tells the life story of Anna E. Hall, highlights the significant role that this African American missionary played in Liberia for the US Methodist Episcopal Church in the early twentieth century. The latter half of the nineteenth century saw increased migration of free African Americans as ministers . . . and missionaries overseas, especially to Africa. Standing as a paragon in missionary ventures, Anna E. Hall represents one of many who were responsible for the resurgence of Christianity in Africa and provides an exemplar for missionary service.

This article discusses how Indonesian state manages its religious diversity. The state policies on religious diversity cannot be understood without analyzing the history of how the founding fathers decided to choose Indonesia as neither secular nor Islamic country, but somewhere between the two. The author discusses three topics, namely the recognized religions, muslim's fear of christianization, and dialogue and inter-religious harmony. Based on the Decree No.1/1965, Confucianism was one of six religions recognized by the state. However, in the Soeharto era, around 1979, this religion was dropped from the list, and only after his fall Confucianism has been rehabilitated, and even the Chinese New Year has been included as one of the national holidays in Indonesia. In terms of muslim-christian relations, there were tensions since 1960s, particularly dealt with the issue of the high number of Muslims who converted to Christianity. It was in this situation that in 1967 a newly built Methodist Church in Meulaboh, Aceh, was closed by Muslims, arguing that the Church was a concrete example of the aggressiveness of Christian missions because it was built in a Muslim majority area. Since the Meulaboh case, the Muslims consistently insisted the government to accommodate their four demands: (1) restriction on establishing new places of worship; (2) restriction onreligious propagation, and control of foreign aid for religious institutions; (4) Islamic religion classes should be given to Muslim students studying in Christian schools; (5) inter-religious marriage should not be allowed. Apart from these contested issues, the government and religious leaders have been trying to avoid conflict and to establish cooperation and peace among religious groups in the country through inter-religious dialogues, either organized by the government or sponsored by the leaders of religious groups themselves. The author argues that specific socio-political contexts should be taken into consideration to understand state policies making concerning religious diversity. Hence, all debates and compromises achieved afterwards usually do not go beyond the neither secular nor Islamic compromise.

Around 1790, two young sisters born into a slaveholding free black family began instructing Antiguan slaves in literacy and Christianity. The sisters, Anne (1768–1834) and Elizabeth (1771–1833) Hart, first instructed their father's slaves at Popeshead—he may have hired them out rather than using them on his own crops—then labored among enslaved women and children in Antiguan plantations and in towns and ports like St. John's and English Harbour. Soon the sisters came to write about faith, slavery, and freedom. Anne and Elizabeth Hart were moderate opponents of slavery, not abolitionists but meliorationists. When compared to their black American, British, and West African contemporaries, the Hart sisters illuminate the birth of a black antislavery Christianity in the late eighteenth century precisely because they never became abolitionists. The Hart sisters shared with their black contemporaries a vivid sense of racial identity and evangelical Christianity. Yet as meliorationists, the Hart sisters did not oppose slavery as an institution, but rather the vice it spread into the lives of blacks. The difference between the Hart sisters and their contemporaries such as Richard Allen, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, Lemuel Haynes, and John Marrant—all luminaries of black abolitionism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—was that the abolitionists felt themselves citizens of a modern nation-state characterized by power that could be used against slave traders and slaveholders. The Hart sisters never thought of themselves as citizens and abjured political means, including revolution, of ending slavery. This essay aims to describe the Hart sisters' faith and antislavery activity and to analyze the difference between meliorationism and abolitionism in terms of a black writer's ability or inability to identify as a citizen of a modern nation-state.

The Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS) (1897–1909) and the Woman’s Missionary Council (WMC) (1910–1940) of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MECS) worked in Korea from 1897 to 1940. Their work used a distinctive mission philosophy, hermeneutics, and implementation of strategies in their encounters with Korean women. Over the course of their years in Korea, Southern Methodist missionary women initiated the Great Korea Revival, established the first social evangelistic centers, educated the first indigenous female church historian, and ordained women for the first time in Korea. This article argues that, even though the missionary activities of the single female missionaries occurred in the context of “Christian civilization” as a mission theory, their holistic Wesleyan missiology departed from the colonial theory of mission as civilization. The first section of the article offers background information regarding the single female missionaries to help understand them. What motivated these females to venture in foreign lands with the Gospel? What was their preparation? The second section presents the religious, cultural, social, and political background of Korea during the time the missionaries arrived. The third section describes and analyzes the evangelistic and social ministries of the female missionaries in the nascent Korean mission. The final section describes and analyzes the appropriation and reinterpretation of the Bible and Christianity by Korean women, especially the work of Korean Bible women and Methodist female Christians in the quest for independence from Japanese control in the Independence Movement of 1919.

AbstractWhereas women's prayer groups are a well-known strength of African Christianity in Southern Africa, the evangelistic and pastoral contribution of individual women who were not clergy wives has been under-appreciated. Echoing models from Victorian London and Indian missions, Methodism in South Africa evolved an authorised, paid form of female lay ministry via middle-aged black Biblewomen sponsored and overseen by white Women's Auxiliary groups. The first appointee in the Transvaal and Swaziland District wrote comparatively full reports of emotionally 'hot' revival meetings. In 'hard' kraals she encountered hostility in the form of patriarchal control of women and an unusual proliferation of rival indigenous spirits. Her successors found male drinking an even greater obstacle to a sympathetic hearing. In urban townships along the Witwatersrand, Biblewomen work was less pioneering and more routinised, providing pastoral support to local churches via sick-visiting and following up lapsed members. From 1945-59, some Biblewomen were trained at Lovedale Bible School. The period after 1960 deserves separate exploration. In 1997, a new start was made with a national, autonomous Biblcwomen ministry, though many women, black and white, regretted severing their personal and organisational links of mutual dependence.

AbstractFor over a millennium, the myth of Saints Cyril and Methodius has played a vital role in European Christianity. In the late twentieth century, both John Paul II and Aleksii II appealed to the saints but, in doing so, projected different 'maps' of the continent. For the pope, who imagined a Christian Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals, the saints were bridge-builders and exemplars of ecumenism. For the patriarch, the Cyrillomethodian heritage identified Russia as an Orthodoxbelieving, Cyrillic-writing nation distinct from the West. Thus, while John Paul used the myth to amalgamate, Aleksii used it to differentiate.

Kondratyk L. "Ideas of Civil Religion in the Creative Work of Cyril Methodians". The author is based on the fact that the civil religion is such a sociocultural phenomenon in which, through the prism of a peculiar religious language and specific practices, the necessity of acquiring and establishing a national state is substantiated, which originates in the need of the community to find the sacral in the activity that is inherent in the transcendent, eternally -linear character and which is rooted in the history of the territory. It is proved that the soil on which the ideas of the Cyril and Methodius civil religion originated is Western European romanticism, religiosity, the starting point of which was the idea of religion as the focus of the spiritual world of the individual and community, the idea of the Higher Reason that sets the directions for historical development, Christianity a decisive role in the spiritual and moral and social renewal of mankind, the view of Ukraine as an independent cultural and historical and social force, the influence of creativity T. Shevche gt; The main ideas of the civil religion of the Cyril Methodians are as follows: the messianism of the Ukrainian spirit manifests itself in the ability to unite the Slavs in the best way, because Ukraine is inspired by self-sacrifice with the Christian spirit and has apostolic intercession; Kiev - the capital of the resurrected from the oppression of the Slavs, the city - in which the courts prevail, truth, equality; concepts "temple", "truth", "righteous judgment", "freedom", "brotherhood", "equality", "love", "Kiev", "Kiev mountains" - the basic concepts-symbols of the Ukrainian civil religion; in the Ukrainian community with the need to coincide Christian values and moral standards, which dominate it.

On Sunday, October 23, 1983, a notable event occurred in San Francisco. A celebration of music, word, and prayer commemorated the five-hundredth birthday of the great Protestant reformer, Martin Luther. Leaders of the Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational, and Lutheran traditions took part in the service. Representatives of many other denominations marched in the processional singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Choral settings from the Greek Orthodox service framed the liturgy. Most remarkable, the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco opened the ceremony, and the event took place in St. Mary's Cathedral. Reformation-rooted Protestant Christianity thus was recognized by a broad panorama of world Christian traditions that had lived side by side for well over a century in the strongly Catholic City of Saint Francis by the Golden Gate.

Abstract This essay explores how Congolese Protestants developed a partnership with Kentucky-born Methodist evangelist Ford Philpot from 1966 to 1978. Philpot’s revival tours allowed Congolese clergy to negotiate as equals with U.S. Protestants, marking a major change from the dominant role of missionaries prior to independence in 1960. During and after Philpot’s crusades Congolese Protestants wrote Philpot about their spiritual views and their troubles in Mobutu’s Zaire. Instead of being merely passive followers of Philpot’s evangelical and charismatic preaching, Congolese sought to use him as a source of financial patronage as well as spiritual support. This essay questions common assumptions regarding U.S.-Congolese ties under Mobutu, and investigates how the rise of evangelical Christianity in postcolonial Africa was clearly shaped by cold war concerns as well as anxieties over national identity and the rise of African dictatorships.

AbstractAfrican theologies are most often classified as either theologies of inculturation, or of liberation. Canaan Banana was one of few African theologians who combine authentic indigenization and liberation in their thought. The author, who knew Rev. Banana personally, based his analysis on Banana's writings and on interpretations by other scholars. Banana's theology was influenced by his ecumenical leadership as a Methodist minister, studies in the United States, involvement in the liberation struggle, and national leadership as the first President of Zimbabwe. Banana's liberation perspective, in contrast to those of most South African black theologians, dealt with issues of class rather than of color. His political theology, articulated when he was president of Zimbabwe, focused on the relation of socialism and Christianity. For him liberation involved struggle and even armed struggle. In his last decade former President Banana began to articulate a prophetic "Combat Theology." Banana stimulated a heated discussion on biblical hermeneutics in southern Africa by proposing deletion from the Bible of passages used to justify oppression. Believing that God is revealed also through creation and African culture, he found creative myths and images of Jesus in the cultures of his own Shona and Ndebele peoples. His contribution is a theology that can help Christianity to be both indigenous and socially relevant in 21st century Africa.

Religion law – the law of the state on religion – has been taught for generations in the law schools of continental Europe, though its introduction in those of the United Kingdom is relatively recent. By way of contrast, within the Anglican Communion there is very little teaching about Anglican canon law. The Church of England does not itself formally train clergy or legal officers in the canon and ecclesiastical laws that they administer. There is no requirement that these be studied for clerical formation in theological colleges or in continuing ministerial education. The same applies to Anglicanism globally – though there are some notable exceptions in a small number of provinces. This is in stark contrast to other ecclesiastical traditions: the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Methodist, Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist and United churches all provide training for ministry candidates in their own systems of church law, polity or order. However, no study to date has compared the approaches of these traditions to the teaching of church law today. This article seeks to stimulate an ecumenical debate as to the provision, purposes, practices and principles of the teaching of church law across the ecclesiastical traditions of global Christianity. It does so by presenting examples of courses offered (institutions, purposes, subjects, methods and levels), the educative role of church law itself, requirements under church law for church officers to study the subject, and parallels from the secular world in terms of debate in the academy and practice on the nature of legal education, particularly the role played in it by the Critical Legal Studies movement.1

Daniel John Gogerly (1792–1862), a British Wesleyan Methodist missionary, served in Sri Lanka from 1818 until his death. He learnt P?li in M?tara in the 1830s and was one of the first British translators of the P?li texts into English. Praised by fellow orientalist, T.W. Rhys Davis, as ‘the greatest Pali scholar of his age’ and hailed by his missionary colleagues as the expert who showed them how to attack Buddhism, his work was both pioneering and deeply flawed. This paper first situates Gogerly in his missionary context and then examines one translation — the first 18 vaggas of the Dhammapada, using three versions, one of which was an unpublished rough translation. It demonstrates that Gogerly, in spite of a commendable wish to be just to Buddhism, used his translations to highlight difference between Buddhism and Christianity in furtherance of his missionary agenda. Gogerly is important not only because his translations were so early but also because the differing factors that conditioned them underscore the complexity within any study of orientalist representations of Buddhism.

Within Haiti’s growing transnational Protestant community, there are different types of churches and adherents that practice traditional forms of Protestant Christianity (such as the Adventist, Methodist and Baptist faiths) and Pentecostal/Charismatic forms of Protestant Christianity. Using Michèle Lamont’s work on symbolic boundaries, I explore how Haitian Protestants living in New Providence, Bahamas, differentiate these two major Haitian Protestant church cultures through the use of denigrating terms about differing religious traditions. Churches which practice traditional forms of Haitian Protestantism, for example, are sometimes called touloutoutou churches. Churches where Pentecostal/Charismatic forms of Haitian Protestantism are practiced are sometimes referred to as tet mare churches by some Haitian Protestants. In addition, practitioners’ descriptions reflect issues of social class and contested notions of Christian authenticity among Haitian Protestants in the Bahamas. Dans la communauté haïtienne protestante transnationale, il existe différents types d’églises et de fidèles qui forment une pratique traditionnelle du christianisme protestant (comme les adventistes, méthodistes et les religions Baptiste) et pentecôtiste / charismatique qui forment le christianisme protestant. Avec l’utilisation du travail de Michèle Lamont sur les frontières symboliques, j’explore comment les protestants haïtiens vivant à New Providence, Bahamas, peuvent faire la différence entre ces deux grandes cultures haïtiennes grâce à l’utilisation des termes dénigrants au sujet de traditions religieuses différentes. Les églises haïtiennes qui pratiquent les formes traditionnelles du protestantisme, par exemple, sont parfois appelées « églises touloutoutou ». D’autre part, les églises où les formes pentecôtiste / charismatique du protestantisme haïtien sont pratiquées sont parfois dénommés « églises tèt mare » pour certains protestants haïtiens. En outre, les descriptions des praticiens reflètent les questions de classe sociale et les notions d’authenticité chrétienne attaquée chez les protestants haïtiens aux Bahamas.

In 988, prince Volodymyr took up the great epochal challenges of faith and grace, making the salvifi c secret of the Baptism of the Ruthenians and other Slav peoples inhabiting the vast lands of Kievan Rus. This is the most important breakthrough moment of the act of conversion and the process of Christianization, opening the Christian epoch throughout Russia and including Kievan Rus in the civilization of countries of the early Middle Ages. It is hard to overestimate the importance of these „plural” monasteries, council schools and libraries for the further development of Kievan Rus. After all, they were the driving force of the missionary work of Cyril and Methodius, they promoted and disseminated the religion and Christian principles of life and co-existence, created works conducive to the formation of Rusin’s personality of „new times” and at the same time satisfying the whole of his religious, social and cultural needs. The missionary work of Cyril and Methodius in Rus – Ukraine gave Kyiv Christianity the hallmarks of universality, thus opening up the possibility of bringing together and playing the role of a bridge between Christian East and West and drawing a full hand on the heritage of civilization and culture. Literature, art and science of both the East and the West. It is no coincidence, therefore, that Kiev fulfi lled an honorable role of „the mother of Ruthenian cities,” and at the same time as Constantinople was perceived as the „New Jerusalem”. It is the fruit of the idea of the apostolicity of Kiev realized by the rulers of Rus-Ukraine for over two centuries, which experienced its „Golden Age” of development.

Introduction Polygamy has declined in the last decade, but it is still prevalent in West African nations including Ghana even with the arrival of Christianity and colonists, which came to be recognized as a form of slavery that needed to be abolished. Aim To analyze the determinants of polygyny among married Christian women in Ghana. Methods Ghana Maternal Health Survey data was used for this study to do an analytic cross-section study. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 20. The association between dependent and independent variables was explored using chi-square and logistic regression. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. Results The prevalence of Ghanaian Christian women’s involvement in polygyny marriage union was 12.2%, the prevalence was higher (15.0%) among women of Anglican denomination, catholic denomination (13.9%), and the lowest (8.4%) prevalence recorded among those of Methodist denominations. The predictor factors identified include the age of the woman, history of education, type of place of residence, region, ethnicity, early sex initiation, and history of multiple unions. Conclusion The prevalence of polygyny in this present study is high given the strict position the Christian religion has against polygyny. This study recommends that the pros and cons of polygyny are objectively looked at from a scientific point rather than a religious point of view.

Current evaluation of the Church of England under the first four Georges follows in the main the assessment made by Norman Sykes in his monumental Church and State in England in the Eighteenth Century, published in 1934. According to that view the Church, which was lastingly cleared of the universal slackness previously imputed to it, exhibited a pervasive Latitudinarianism sympathetically portrayed by Sykes as ‘practical Christianity’, an emphasis on cdnduct and good works to the neglect of ‘organised churchmanship’ and the ‘mystical element’ in religion. R. W. Greaves detected similar features in the concept of ‘moderation’: suspicion of popery and friendship towards dissenters, a cult of plainness in theological explanation and a very general contempt of whatever was medieval. Historians have been willing to acknowledge as exceptions to this ‘mild’ quality of Anglican churchmanship the early Methodists and ‘small Evangelical and High Church minorities’, but only the two former have been taken seriously. Piety of a more traditional kind - rubrical, sacramental, Catholic - has been identified, only to be discounted. The Establishment has been seen in the light of the judgement recently summarised by Dr Anthony Russell: ‘Certainly the temper of the eighteenth century which favoured reason above all else, and was deeply suspicious of mysticism and the emotions, was against any form of sacramentalism.’

Diversity and the fragmented nature of Protestantism are the reason of various interpretations of its boundaries and the number of denominations it comprises. The key criterion of affiliation with Protestantism is the acceptance of basic doctrines set forward in the Niceno- Constantinopolitan Creed. The analysis of the beliefs of the religious organizations traditionally connected with Protestantism suggests that Jehovah's Witnesses, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Pentecostals-Unitarians are out of the doctrinal field of Christianity in general and out of the range of Protestantism in particular. The other distinct characteristic of Protestantism is the acceptance of the Five Solas – sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, Solus Christus и Soli Deo gloria, which are aimed at the validation of Christian doctrines set forth in the Bible. This thesis was demonstrated via the analysis of the doctrinal sources of Lutheranism, Reformed Church and Anglican Church. The article also reports on the five solas present in the creeds of Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists, Mennonites, Religious Society of Friends, and Seventh-Day Adventists. Cultural and historical proximity of protestants and religious organizations that do not meet the criteria above calls for a new category – “post reformation religions” – that can embrace them all.

During the late nineteenth century, James Walker Hood was bishop of the North Carolina Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and grand master of the North Carolina Grand Lodge of Prince Hall Masons. In his forty-four years as bishop, half of that time as senior bishop of the denomination, Reverend Hood was instrumental in planting and nurturing his denomination's churches throughout the Carolinas and Virginia. Founder of North Carolina's denominational newspaper and college, author of five books including two histories of the AMEZ Church, appointed assistant superintendent of public instruction and magistrate in his adopted state, Hood's career represented the broad mainstream of black denominational leaders who came to the South from the North during and after the Civil War. Concurrently, Grand Master Hood superintended the southern jurisdiction of the Prince Hall Masonic Grand Lodge of New York and acted as a moving force behind the creation of the region's black Masonic lodges—often founding these secret male societies in the same places as his fledgling churches. At his death in 1918, the Masonic Quarterly Review hailed Hood as “one of the strong pillars of our foundation.” If Bishop Hood's life was indeed, according to his recent biographer, “a prism through which to understand black denominational leadership in the South during the period 1860–1920,” then what does his leadership of both the Prince Hall Lodge and the AMEZ Church tell us about the nexus of fraternal lodges and African American Christianity at the turn of the twentieth century?

Faith-Based Finno-Ugric Outreach: Estonian Christian Missionaries among Kindred Peoples in Russia This article provides an initial overview of the role of Christianity in the Finno-Ugric movement and the instrumentalisation of Finno-Ugric identity. It analyses the mission activity conducted by Estonians (and Finns to some extent) among speakers of Finno-Ugric (Uralic) languages in Russia. Above all, the writings of missionaries are used as the source – primarily mission publications published in Estonia. The background is the author’s fieldwork conducted among Nenets reindeer herders, who have been influenced by Russian and Ukrainian Protestant missionaries, and the Udmurt people living on the far side of the Kama, the latter being untouched by mission work. In both communities, religion and language inherited from forebears have a noteworthy role, even though the younger generation is becoming equally bilingual (the Russian language often dominates) and fewer and fewer young people take part in the non-Christian rituals passed down by their ancestors. The first half of the article gives an overview of how the church’s outreach directed at peoples who speak Finno-Ugric languages (hõimumisjon and hõimutöö are Estonian terms used) developed and the ideology behind it. The second half focuses on the activities of Estonian and Finnish missionaries in Russia. The author looks at the reception that the Erzya and Moksha Mordvins, Mari, Udmurts and Zyrian Komis have given the missionaries and also examines Protestant relations with the Russian Orthodox Church and representatives of local native religions. Whereas the collapse of the Soviet Union saw extensive missionary activity in Russia, Protestants from Estonia and Finland (mainly Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists and Pentecostals) set out to actively spread the gospel among Finno-Ugric peoples living in Russia. As Estonians and Finns are often accepted as ‘kin’, missionaries see this as a ‘niche provided by God’, which should be utilised. The goal for the missionaries is to create a Christian community where the kindred brothers and sisters become religious brethren. In spite of accusations to the contrary, they consider their endeavour something that will save Finno-Ugric cultures and languages, proceeding from the attempt to bring eastern ‘kindred peoples’ closer to the Protestant world and the world of the Estonians and Finns and the possibility of redemption. Protestant Estonian and Finnish missionaries portray themselves as preservers of the local languages. In practice, however, their activities are quite conflicting. On one hand, the need to make religious texts available in native languages is stressed, and they participate in organising translation of Christian texts and promote the local mission in the indigenous languages. On the other hand, the primary language used for outreach is not the local language but Russian, as Russian proficiency is predominant among Finno-Ugrians (although not always on a par with that of Russians). As the primary objective is to convert as many people as possible to Christianity, it is not of primary importance for missionaries to learn the local language. Due to conflicting values and practical choices, few native-language congregations are created. Estonian and Finnish Protestants style themselves as preservers of local cultures. The role model is that of Estonian and Finnish Christian popular cultures where the role of ‘paganism’ is under control and the elements of national culture tend to be integrated into a cultural whole. Missionaries cultivate an image of culture as something that can be dressed, sung, eaten, but not as something that relates to the house guardian spirits or the souls of ancestors, communicating with whom is a factor underlying the creation of a major part of the visible culture. To sum up, the author asserts that Christianisation as a culture-changing force has all the more powerful an effect if cultural changes are resisted.

Eastern and southwestern Macedonia, as well as southern Albania, became parts of Bulgaria in the first decade of the rule of Khan Boris. After his baptism (864/865) and the establishment of an archbishopric (870; 880), the renewal of the former Byzantine church organization on Bulgaria’s territory began. In the eastern parts, the process unfolded slowly because of the strength of the ruling ethnic Bulgarian class, which was pagan; in the western parts, however, the organization of church eparchies went more easily because the local, predominantly Slavic, population had accepted Christianity centuries earlier. This was exactly the reason why Boris-Mikhail sent the disciples of Cyril and Methodius, who had just arrived (885/886) and were well versed in holding religious services in the Slavonic language, to the remote southwest of the country to carry out the so-called “Slavonic Project.” These disciples (including Clement and his associates—Naum, Konstantin, and other unnamed companions) started training local people to serve as clergymen and formed a church structure in Kutmičevica in order to introduce religious services in the Slavonic language in those regions. When Kniaz Simeon came to power, he continued Boris’s “Slavonic Project,” which thus continued to be focused in the southwestern regions of Bulgaria. On being ordained the first Slavonic bishop, Clement organized his eparchy by ethnic (Slavonic) rather than territorial principles. It was Naum who continued his mission to educate people. Konstantin, for his part, was assigned bishop of Bregalnica when Bulgaria expanded close to Thessaloniki (904) in the early 10th century. Sources suggest that the fourth Slavonic bishop was Marko of Devol, one of Clement’s students, and therefore the question of the existence of a third Slavonic bishop has inevitably been raised. As of recently, scholars have been arguing that this third bishop is to be located in Pelagonija. The existence of these four Slavonic bishops and the location of the territories in which they served undoubtedly suggests that Boris’s “Slavonic Project” had chronological continuity and that it spread during Simeon’s rule to the neighboring Slavonic regions, along the Bregalnica and the surrounding area, and perhaps to Pelagonija as well. Their activities in the aforementioned regions continued at least until the middle of the 10th century.

In the 19th century, missionaries from England brought Methodism to Southern Africa. Like all other missionaries who brought Christianity to Africa, they brought not only the Gospel, but also their culture and language. This article seeks to acknowledge the strides made by the Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA) regarding implanting Methodism in African soil. Thus, the article further explores the tension that persists in the MCSA between Christianity and African Traditional Religion (ATR). It argues that this tension opens opportunities for the MCSA to explore. The article uses secondary or desk research as a methodology to investigate this topic. The research showed that there is a tension that exists between Christianity and ATR, which affords the MCSA an opportunity to explore what it means to be African and Methodist in the MCSA; to dissect the causes of this tension; and to interrogate these causes for what it means for the MCSA. The article concludes that the tension under study has resulted from the MCSA taking its time to put its resolutions in black and white in the form of liturgy, policy, or guidelines. Thus, a recommendation is made for more dialogue and openness concerning areas where the MCSA could venture towards achieving its vision of “A Christ Healed Africa for the Healing of Nations”. Finally, the article argues that in order to heal Africa, the book of order and the Gospel preached in the MCSA should speak and make sense to Methodists of African descent.

The following papers were presented to the Canadian Society of Church History in 2012, but were not made available for publication: Ian Hesketh, “‘Vomited from the Jaws of Hell’: The Controversy of Ecce Homo in Mid-Victorian Britain”; Geoff Read, “Echoes of 1905-Secular Conflict in Interwar France, 1919-40”; Amy Von Heyking, “‘It is a privilege to have a Christian Government’: William Aberhart and the Place of Religion in Alberta’s Public Schools”; Lucille Marr, “Church Women, the Home Front, and the Great War”; Gordon Heath, “Whatever Happened to the British Empire? A Canadian Baptist Case Study”; Melissa Davidson, “Enduing the Cause with Righteousness: Canadian Anglican Views of the Great War, 1914-18”; James T. Robertson, “Anglican and Presbyterian Churches and a Loyalist Theology During the War of 1812”; Scott McLaren, “Rekindling the Canadian Fire: Print Culture and the Reconstruction of Upper Canadian Methodism After the War of 1812”; Denis McKim, “Contesting Christian Loyalty: Religion and Meanings of Britishness in Upper Canada”; Robynne Rogers Healey, “Reconciling Approaches to Non-Violence and Apartheid: Pacifist Conflict among Friends in the 1970s and 1980s”; Indre Cuplinskas, “Doing it Rite: Catholic Action and Liturgical Renewal in Quebec”; Christo Aivalis, “In Service of the Lowly Nazarene: The Canadian Labour Press and a Case for Radical Christianity, 1926-39”; Andrew M. Eason, “Missions, Race and Representation: The Salvation Army’s Portrayal of Africa and India in Victorian Britain”; Bruce Douville, “The Via Media and the Evangelical Road: The Attitudes of Anglican Church Newspapers in Canada West Towards American Slavery and Related Issues, 1837-65”; Nathan Dirks, “An Unknown Legacy: Canadian Mennonite Enlistments During the Second World War”; James Enns, “From Heartland of the Reformation to Post-Christian Mission Field: North American Conservative Protestants and the Mission to West Germany, 1945-74.”

Christianity was rekindled in Asante Kingdom in the Gold Coast (Ghana) in the 15th century by European missionaries. The Asante converts were taught to abandon their religion to become Christians. However, some Asante Christians, and in fact, this could be true about other contexts in Africa and elsewhere, remain dual religious, accepting Christianity on one hand and Asante Traditional Religion on the other. In this study, the author seeks to find out why some Asante Christians resort to some elements of Asante Traditional Religion in times of crisis and whether an Asante can be truly Asante and truly Christian. The study used the convergent mixed-methods case study approach in the Roman Catholic Church, the Methodist Church Ghana and the Church of Pentecost in Ejisu Juaben Municipality to collect primary data using a questionnaire and an interview guide. Using the Krejcie and Morgan Sample Size Determination Table, three hundred and seventy-seven (377) Christians with diverse backgrounds and roles out of a total population of 20,000 Christians from the three Churches were surveyed. In addition, nine (9) ordained ministers from the three denominations were interviewed purposively in the study because of their knowledge and expertise in the topic. The study found out that some Asante Christians are dual religious because they are pragmatic and resort to either Christianity or some elements of Asante Traditional Religion in times of crisis for solutions to their problems. The study recommends that Asante Christians should appreciate the role of Asante Traditional Religion in preparing the soil for the establishment of Christianity; dialogue with Asante Traditional Religion and enculturate or integrate the gospel with Asante Traditional Religion to become truly Asante and truly Christian. Keywords: Asante, Christian, Christianity, Traditional Religion, dialogue, inculturation.

The Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA) is currently engaged in a conversation on ukuthwasa (initiation into an ancestral calling). The conversation has sparked different reactions within the Church. Some are uncomfortable engaging in this conversation as it is seen as an unnecessary and unChristian conversation to have within the Church. There are also some who have gone through the ukuthwasa and feel that the conversation is long overdue within the MCSA. Furthermore, some believe in sangomas and are happy about this conversation. While this conversation is taking place within the MCSA, it is shrouded in suspicion and fear. There is fear that it might lead to the conversion of the Church to African traditional religion, which many feel is the opposite of Christianity. This paper is intended as a contribution to this conversation by using secondary or desk research as a methodology. Firstly, the paper defines the African worldview in which ukuthwasa is embedded. Secondly, it explores the meaning of hybridisation. Thirdly, it indicates areas within the Christian faith where hybridisation has become part of worship and belief. Finally, the paper concludes by recommending openness in this conversation as a likely solution that could lead to the Methodist vision of a “Christ healed Africa for the healing of nations.”

ZusammenfassungDie Mystik gilt im interreligiösen Dialog als diejenige Dimension von Religion, die gemäß dem Essentialismus den gemeinsamen Kern der Religionen darstellt. In Unterschied dazu vertritt der Kontextualismus die These, dass Mystik nur in spezifischen religiösen Kontexten entsteht und so seine unverwechselbare Eigenheit erhält. Saeed Zarrabi-Zadeh vergleicht in seiner Arbeit Meister Eckhart und Rumi methodisch so miteinander, dass er die jeweiligen Stärken des Essentialismus und des Kontextualismus nutzt und ihre Schwächen vermeidet. Auf der Grundlage dieses methodischen Neuansatzes und eines weitgefassten Mystikbegriffs, der Ethik, Praxis, Spekulation und Dogmatik umfasst, kommt er zu neuen Differenzierungen im religionsphänomenologischen Vergleich und legt zugleich erhebliche Differenzen im theologischen Deutehorizont der jeweiligen Mystiker offen. Darüberhinaus arbeitet er mit seiner Interpretation der

Abstract This article discusses the encounter between the missionaries of the Glasgow Missionary Society (Free Church of Scotland, hence Presbyterians), and the Wesleyans (Methodists) in the nineteenth century and the AmaXhosa in the Eastern Frontier of the Cape Colony. It specifically highlights the AmaXhosa’s contestations of some European Christian teachings, cultural values, and a way of life, which the Presbyterian and Wesleyan missionaries tried to impose on them in the process of ‘Christianizing’ and ‘civilizing’ them. The study illustrates that contrary to the commonly held conception that the Xhosa readily embraced the gospel, conversion to Christianity was a long and drawn-out process that entailed contestations and resistance on many levels and in many forms.

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 基督教（新教）來華宣教與中國現代化具有密切關係。其中傳教士除宣教建堂，贈醫施藥，設辦學校，注意慈惠工作，更進而出版書刊，譯介西學新知，鼓吹變法，影響清季改革運動。就此而論，不少出身於基督教之華人信徒，由於與教士之過從關係，得以知悉西學新知，從而成為清季之改革家，美國史家Paul Cohen並將此批背景之改革家標貼為「基督教改革者」(Christian Reformer)，本文所研究之黃乃裳(1840-1924)即為個中之顯例。黃氏原為美以美會(Methodist Episcopal Church)之傳道，早年服務教會，參與宣教與文字工作；中年中舉，成為福州士紳，繼而倡導改革，投身戊戌維新運動。故本文即從基督教入華宣教，促進中國現代化之線索下，探討黃氏與清季改革運動之關係，全文共分三部份，包括福州美以美會教士之宣教事業，黃乃裳之社會及政治改革言論與活動。This paper aims at finding out the relationship between Christainity and the modernization of China. Focus is placed on the introduction of western learning in China by missionaries which led to the emergence of “Christian reformers” and the reform movement in late 19th Century China. This historical phenomenon has aroused the interest of historians such as Paul Cohen and Wang Shuhuai and much research has been carried out on “Christian reformers”, mainly from the provinces of Jiangsu and Guangdong. My case study of Huang Naichang, a convert and reformer from Fujian, gives further testimony to the influence of Christianty on the formation of reform ideas in Late Qing. Converted to Christianity in 1866 when he was seventeen, Huang became an active member and preacher of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Fuzhou. Together with missionaries such as Stehpen L. Baldwin, Nathan Sites, Franklin Ohlinger and Myron C. Wilcox, Huang became involved, not only in preaching the gospel, but also in literary work including the translation of works on religion and western learning as well as editing of missionary journals. His exposure to western ideas led him to the road of reform. This paper is divided into three parts:1. Missionary enterprise of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Fuzhou;2. Huang Naichang’s ideas and activities on social reforms; and3. Huang’s ideas and activities on political reforms.

There is a disparity between expectations that the members of a community will work together for the common good — and the stark reality that human beings form into groups, or parties, to engage in conflict with each other. This is particularly the case in so-called popular governments that include some wider political involvement by the people. In ancient Greece stasis, or endemic conflict between the democratic and oligarchic elements of a city was very common. Likewise, the late Roman Republic maintained a division between the populares and the optimates. In both cases there was violence as both sides battled for dominance. For example, in late republican Rome street gangs formed that employed intimidation and violence for political ends.In seventeenth century England there was conflict between those who favoured royal authority and those who wished to see more power devolved to parliament, which led to Civil War in the 1640s. Yet the English ideal, as expressed by The Book of Common Prayer (1549; and other editions) was that the country be quietly governed. It seemed perverse that the members of the body politic should be in conflict with each other. By the late seventeenth century England was still riven by conflict between two groups which became designated as the Whigs and the Tories. The divisions were both political and religious. Most importantly, these divisions were expressed at the local level, in such things as the struggle for the control of local corporations. They were not just political but could also be personal and often turned nasty as families contended for local control. The mid seventeenth century had been a time of considerable violence and warfare, not only in Europe and England but across Eurasia, including the fall of the Ming dynasty in China (Parker). This violence occurred in the wake of a cooler climate change, bringing in its wake crop failure followed by scarcity, hunger, disease and vicious warfare. Millions of people died.Conditions improved in the second half of the seventeenth century and countries slowly found their way to a new relative stability. The Qing created a new imperial order in China. In France, Louis XIV survived the Fronde and his answer to the rage and divisions of that time was the imposition of an autocratic and despotic state that simply prohibited the existence of divisions. Censorship and the inquisition flourished in Catholic Europe ensuring that dissidence would not evolve into violence fuelled by rage. In 1685, Louis expelled large numbers of Protestants from France.Divisions did not disappear in England at the end of the Civil War and the Restoration of Charles II. Initially, it appears that Charles sought to go down the French route. There was a regulation of ideas as new laws meant that the state licensed all printed works. There was an attempt to impose a bureaucratic authoritarian state, culminating in the short reign of James II (Pincus, Ertman). But its major effect, since the heightened fear of James’ Catholicism in Protestant England, was to stoke the ‘rage of party’ between those who supported this hierarchical model of social order and those who wanted political power less concentrated (Knights Representation, Plumb).The issue was presumed to be settled in 1688 when James was chased from the throne, and replaced by the Dutchman William and his wife Mary. In the official language of the day, liberty had triumphed over despotism and the ‘ancient constitution’ of the English had been restored to guarantee that liberty.However, three major developments were going on in England by the late seventeenth century: The first is the creation of a more bureaucratic centralised state along the lines of the France of Louis XIV. This state apparatus was needed to collect the taxes required to finance and administer the English war machine (Pincus). The second is the creation of a genuinely popular form of government in the wake of the expulsion of James and his replacement by William of Orange (Ertman). This means regular parliaments that are elected every three years, and also a free press to scrutinise political activities. The third is the development of financial institutions to enable the war to be conducted against France, which only comes to an end in 1713 (Pincus). Here, England followed the example of the Netherlands. There is the establishment of the bank of England in 1694 and the creation of a national debt. This meant that those involved in finance could make big profits out of financing a war, so a new moneyed class developed. England's TransformationIn the 1690s as England is transformed politically, religiously and economically, this develops a new type of society that unifies strong government with new financial institutions and arrangements. In this new political configuration, the big winners are the new financial elites and the large (usually Whig) aristocratic landlords, who had the financial resources to benefit from it. The losers were the smaller landed gentry who were taxed to pay for the war. They increasingly support the Tories (Plumb) who opposed both the war and the new financial elites it helped to create; leading to the 1710 election that overwhelmingly elected a Tory government led by Harley and Bolingbroke. This government then negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, with the Whigs retaining a small minority.History indicates that the post-1688 developments do not so much quell the ‘rage of party’ as encourage it and fan the fires of conflict and discontent. Parliamentary elections were held every three years and could involve costly, and potentially financially ruinous, contests between families competing for parliamentary representation. As these elections involved open voting and attempts to buy votes through such means as wining and dining, they could be occasions for riotous behaviour. Regular electoral contests, held in an electorate that was much larger than it would be one hundred years later, greatly heightened the conflicts and kept the political temperature at a high.Fig. 1: "To Him Pudel, Bite Him Peper"Moreover, there was much to fuel this conflict and to ‘maintain the rage’: First, the remodelling of the English financial system combined with the high level of taxation imposed largely on the gentry fuelled a rage amongst this group. This new world of financial investments was not part of their world. They were extremely suspicious of wealth not derived from landed property and sought to limit the power of those who held such wealth. Secondly, the events of 1688 split the Anglican Church in two (Pincus). The opponents of the new finance regimes tended also to be traditional High Church Anglicans who feared the newer, more tolerant government policy towards religion. Finally, the lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695 meant that the English state was no longer willing to control the flow of information to the public (Kemp). The end result was that England in the 1690s became something akin to a modern public culture in which there was a relatively free flow of political information, constant elections held with a limited, but often substantial franchise, that was operating out of a very new commercial and financial environment. These political divisions were now deeply entrenched and very real passion animated each side of the political divide (Knights Devil).Under these circumstances, it was not possible simply to stamp out ‘the rage’ by the government repressing the voices of dissent. The authoritarian model for creating public conformity was not an option. A mechanism for lowering the political and religious temperature needed to arise in this new society where power and knowledge were diffused rather than centrally concentrated. Also, the English were aided by the return to a more benign physical environment. In economic terms it led to what Fischer terms the equilibrium of the Enlightenment. The wars of Louis XIV were a hangover from the earlier more desperate age; they prolonged the crisis of that age. Nevertheless, the misery of the earlier seventeenth century had passed. The grim visions of Calvinism (and Jansenism) had lost their plausibility. So the excessive violence of the 1640s was replaced by a more tepid form of political resistance, developing into the first modern expression of populism. So, the English achieved what Plumb calls ‘political stability’ were complex (1976), but relied on two things. The first was limiting the opportunity for political activity and the second was labelling political passion as a form of irrational behaviour – as an unsatisfactory or improper way of conducting oneself in the world. Emotions became an indulgence of the ignorant, the superstitious and the fanatical. This new species of humanity was the gentleman, who behaved in a reasonable and measured way, would express a person commensurate with the Enlightenment.This view would find its classic expression over a century later in Macaulay’s History of England, where the pre-1688 English squires are now portrayed in all their semi-civilised glory, “his ignorance and uncouthness, his low tastes and gross phrases, would, in our time, be considered as indicating a nature and a breeding thoroughly plebeian” (Macaulay 244). While the Revolution of 1688 is usually portrayed as a triumph of liberty, as stated, recent scholarship (Pincus, Ertman) emphasises how the attempts by both Charles and James to build a more bureaucratic state were crucial to the development of eighteenth century England. England was not really a land of liberty that kept state growth in check, but the English state development took a different path to statehood from countries such as France, because it involved popular institutions and managed to eliminate many of the corrupt practices endemic to a patrimonial regime.The English were as interested in ‘good police’, meaning the regulation of moral behaviour, as any state on the European continent, but their method of achievement was different. In the place of bureaucratic regulation, the English followed another route, later be termed in the 1760s as ‘civilisation’ (Melleuish). So, the Whigs became the party of rationality and reasonableness, and the Whig regime was Low Church, which was latitudinarian and amenable to rationalist Christianity. Also, the addition of the virtue and value of politeness and gentlemanly behaviour became the antidote to the “rage of party’”(Knights Devil 163—4) . The Whigs were also the party of science and therefore, followed Lockean philosophy. They viewed themselves as ‘reasonable men’ in opposition to their more fanatically inclined opponents. It is noted that any oligarchy, can attempt to justify itself as an ‘aristocracy’, in the sense of representing the ‘morally’ best people. The Whig aristocracy was more cosmopolitan, because its aristocrats had often served the rulers of countries other than England. In fact, the values of the Whig elite were the first expression of the liberal cosmopolitan values which are now central to the ideology of contemporary elites. One dimension of the Whig/Tory split is that while the Whig aristocracy had a cosmopolitan outlook as more proto-globalist, the Tories remained proto-nationalists. The Whigs became simultaneously the party of liberty, Enlightenment, cosmopolitanism, commerce and civilised behaviour. This is why liberty, the desire for peace and ‘sweet commerce’ came to be identified together. The Tories, on the other hand, were the party of real property (that is to say land) so their national interest could easily be construed by their opponents as the party of obscurantism and rage. One major incident illustrates how this evolved.The Trial of the High Church Divine Henry Sacheverell In 1709, the High Church Divine Henry Sacheverell preached a fiery sermon attacking the Whig revolutionary principles of resistance, and advocated obedience and unlimited submission to authority. Afterwards, for his trouble he was impeached before the House of Lords by the Whigs for high crimes and misdemeanours (Tryal 1710). As Mark Knights (6) has put it, one of his major failings was his breaching of the “Whig culture of politeness and moderation”. The Whigs also disliked Sacheverell for his charismatic appeal to women (Nicholson). He was found guilty and his sermons ordered to be burned by the hangman. But Sacheverell became simultaneously a martyr and a political celebrity leading to a mass outpouring of printed material (Knights Devil 166—186). Riots broke out in London in the wake of the trial’s verdict. For the Whigs, this stood as proof of the ‘rage’ that lurked in the irrational world of Toryism. However, as Geoffrey Holmes has demonstrated, these riots were not aimless acts of mob violence but were directed towards specific targets, in particular the meeting houses of Dissenters. History reveals that the Sacheverell riots were the last major riots in England for almost seventy years until the Lord Gordon anti-Catholic riots of 1780. In the short term they led to an overwhelming Tory victory at the 1710 elections, but that victory was pyrrhic. With the death of Queen Anne, followed by the accession of the Hanoverians to the throne, the Whigs became the party of government. Some Tories, such as Bolingbroke, panicked, and fled to France and the Court of the Pretender. The other key factor was the Treaty of Utrecht, brokered on England’s behalf by the Tory government of Harley and Bolingbroke that brought the Civil war to an end in 1713. England now entered an era of peace; there remained no longer the need to raise funds to conduct a war. The war had forced the English state to both to consolidate and to innovate.This can be viewed as the victory of the party of ‘politeness and moderation’ and the Enlightenment and hence the effective end of the ‘rage of party’. Threats did remain by the Pretender’s (James III) attempt to retake the English throne, as happened in 1715 and 1745, when was backed by the barbaric Scots.The Whig ascendancy, the ascendancy of a minority, was to last for decades but remnants of the Tory Party remained, and England became a “one-and one-half” party regime (Ertman 222). Once in power, however, the Whigs utilised a number of mechanisms to ensure that the age of the ‘rage of party’ had come to an end and would be replaced by one of politeness and moderation. As Plumb states, they gained control of the “means of patronage” (Plumb 161—88), while maintaining the ongoing trend, from the 1680s of restricting those eligible to vote in local corporations, and the Whigs supported the “narrowing of the franchise” (Plumb 102—3). Finally, the Septennial Act of 1717 changed the time between elections from three years to seven years.This lowered the political temperature but it did not eliminate the Tories or complaints about the political, social and economic path that England had taken. Rage may have declined but there was still a lot of dissent in the newspapers, in particular in the late 1720s in the Craftsman paper controlled by Viscount Bolingbroke. The Craftsman denounced the corrupt practices of the government of Sir Robert Walpole, the ‘robinocracy’, and played to the prejudices of the landed gentry. Further, the Bolingbroke circle contained some major literary figures of the age; but not a group of violent revolutionaries (Kramnick). It was true populism, from ideals of the Enlightenment and a more benign environment.The new ideal of ‘politeness and moderation’ had conquered English political culture in an era of Whig dominance. This is exemplified in the philosophy of David Hume and his disparagement of enthusiasm and superstition, and the English elite were also not fond of emotional Methodists, and Charles Wesley’s father had been a Sacheverell supporter (Cowan 43). A moderate man is rational and measured; the hoi polloi is emotional, faintly disgusting, and prone to rage.In the End: A Reduction of Rage Nevertheless, one of the great achievements of this new ideal of civility was to tame the conflict between political parties by recognising political division as a natural part of the political process, one that did not involve ‘rage’. This was the great achievement of Edmund Burke who, arguing against Bolingbroke’s position that 1688 had restored a unified political order, and hence abolished political divisions, legitimated such party divisions as an element of a civilised political process involving gentlemen (Mansfield 3). The lower orders, lacking the capacity to live up to this ideal, were prone to accede to forces other than reason, and needed to be kept in their place. This was achieved through a draconian legal code that punished crimes against property very severely (Hoppit). If ‘progress’ as later described by Macaulay leads to a polite and cultivated elite who are capable of conquering their rage – so the lower orders need to be repressed because they are still essentially barbarians. This was echoed in Macaulay’s contemporary, John Stuart Mill (192) who promulgated Orientals similarly “lacked the virtues” of an educated Briton.In contrast, the French attempt to impose order and stability through an authoritarian state fared no better in the long run. After 1789 it was the ‘rage’ of the ‘mob’ that helped to bring down the French Monarchy. At least, that is how the new cadre of the ‘polite and moderate’ came to view things.ReferencesBolingbroke, Lord. Contributions to the Craftsman. Ed. Simon Varney. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1982.Cowan, Brian. “The Spin Doctor: Sacheverell’s Trial Speech and Political Performance in the Divided Society.” Faction Displayed: Reconsidering the Impeachment of Dr Henry Sacheverell. Ed. Mark Knights. 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