Originally published in 1984, this book charts the political and social consequences of Methodist expansion in the first century of its existence. While the relationship between Methodism and politics is the central subject of the book a number of other important themes are also developed. The Methodist revival is placed in the context of European pietism, enlightenment thought forms, 18th century popular culture, and Wesley’s theological and political opinions. Throughout the book Methodi...

The emergence of Methodism was arguably the most significant transformation of Protestant Christianity since the Reformation. This book explores the rise of Methodism from its unpromising origins as a religious society within the Church of England in the 1730s to a major international religious movement by the 1880s. During that period Methodism refashioned the old denominational order in the British Isles, became the largest religious denomination in the United States, and gave rise ...

In the early twenty-first century it had become a cliché that there was a 'God Gap' between a more religious United States and a more secular Europe. The apparent religious differences between the United States and western Europe continue to be a focus of intense and sometimes bitter debate between three of the main schools in the sociology of religion. According to the influential 'Secularization Thesis', secularization has been an integral part of the processes of modernisation in the We...

Combining expansive storytelling with striking analysis of 'networks, nodes, and nuclei', David Hempton's new book explains major developments in global Christianity between two communication revolutions: print and the internet. His novel approach (replete with vivid metaphor – we read of wildflower gardens and fungi, of exploding fireworks sending sparks of possibility in all directions, and of forests with vast interconnected root systems hidden below our vision) allows him to look beyon...

David Hempton's history of the vibrant period between 1650 and 1832 engages with a truly global story: that of Christianity not only in Europe and North America, but also in Latin America, Africa, Russia and Eastern Europe, India, China, and South-East Asia. Examining eighteenth-century religious thought in its sophisticated national and social contexts, the author relates the narrative of the Church to the rise of religious enthusiasm pioneered by Pietists, Methodists, Evangelicals and Re...

"As Canadian as the maple leaf" is how one observer summed up the United Church of Canada after its founding in 1925. But was this Canadian-made church flawed in its design, as critics have charged? A Church with the Soul of a Nation explores this question by weaving together the history of the United Church with a provocative analysis of religion and cultural change.The story begins in the aftermath of Confederation, when the prospects of building a Christian nation persu...

This second edition of Richard P. Heitzenrater's groundbreaking survey of the Wesleyan movement is the story of the many people who contributed to the theology, organization, and mission of Methodism. This updated version addresses recent research from the past twenty years; includes an extensive bibliography; and fleshes out such topics as the means of grace; Conference: "Large" Minutes: Charles Wesley: Wesley and America; ordination; prison ministry; apostolic church; music; children; Su...

How is a free faith expressed, organised and governed? How are diverse spiritualities and theologies made compatible? What might a religion based in reason and democracy offer today's world? This book will help the reader to understand the contemporary liberal religion of Unitarian Universalism in a historical and global context. Andrea Greenwood and Mark W. Harris challenge the view that the Unitarianism of New England is indigenous and the point from which the religion spread. Relationsh...

This book explores the evolution of British identity and participatory politics in the 1790s. Wil Verhoeven argues that in the course of the French Revolution debate in Britain, the idea of 'America' came to represent for the British people the choice between two diametrically opposed models of social justice and political participation. Yet the American Revolution controversy in the 1790s was by no means an isolated phenomenon. The controversy began with the American crisis debate of the ...

From the founding of the first colonies until the present, the influence of Christianity, as the dominant faith in American society, has extended far beyond church pews into the wider culture. Yet, at the same time, Christians in the United States have disagreed sharply about the meaning of their shared tradition, and, divided by denominational affiliation, race, and ethnicity, they have taken stances on every side of contested public issues from slavery to women’s rights.This volu...

A powerful, thought-provoking and always lively examination of how American Christianity has badly lost its way—with most of what goes by the name of Christianity today being one or another type of heresy—by the youngest writer ever appointed as editorial columnist for The New York Times.In a world populated by “pray and grow rich” gospels and Christian cults of self-esteem, Ross Douthat argues that America’s problem isn’t too much religion; nor is it into...

Religious life in early America is often equated with the fire-and-brimstone Puritanism best embodied by the theology of Cotton Mather. Yet, by the nineteenth century, American theology had shifted dramatically away from the severe European traditions directly descended from the Protestant Reformation, of which Puritanism was in the United States the most influential. In its place arose a singularly American set of beliefs. In America's God, Mark Noll has written a biography of this new Am...