The Dissenters Volume III: The Crisis and Conscience of Nonconformity

by Watts, Michael R.

• ISBN13: 9780198229698
• ISBN10: 0198229690
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-05-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author Biography

Michael Watts was Reader in Modern History at the University of Nottingham (1967-1998). He completed the text of his third volume of the Dissenters before he died in 2011. This volume subsequently has been lightly revised and a preface added by Professor David Bebbington.

Table of Contents

PART I: 'THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH': THE CRISIS OF DISSENT
1. 'The God of the hills': The impact of Romanticism
2. 'Destructive of the authority of divine revelation': Genesis, geology, and evolution
3. 'The ground on which Rational Christianity may firmly take its stand': higher criticism and the Unitarians
4. 'An inspired communication from the Deity ... Or ... Nothing': the dilemma of Evangelical Dissenters
5. 'The seal and servant of Christianity': the Spiritualist alternative
6. 'An easy good - natured God': the collapse of Calvinism
7. 'The hateful mystery': the eclipse of eternal punishment
8. 'The sceptical tendencies of modern times': the isolation of Spurgeon
9. 'The heresies of the Baptist Union': the Down Grade
10. 'A conspiracy to undermine our holy faith': the liberal triumph
PART II: 'THE HUB AND FOUNT OF SOCIAL LIFE': THE LIBERALIZATION OF DISSENT
11. Church membership and chapel attendance: the consequences of the crisis
12. 'Conversion is not necessary to regeneration': the failure of recruitment
13. Nonconformity's shrinking constituency: the evidence of the dissenting registers
14. 'Influential families lost to conformity': the flight of the bourgeoisie
15. The failure of success: the loss of the poor
16. The 'most spiritually destitute and degraded': missions to the poor
17. 'Diversity of opinion no bar to Christian communion': the relaxation of discipline
18. 'We must not leave Satan to provide the "recreations of life"': the problem of pleasure
19. The 'social and intellectual well-being of our members': the institutional church
20. 'A liberal education': culture without anarchy
21. 'Winning souls' or 'unlimited speculation'?: colleges and universities
22. Frugality and over work: pastors and preachers
23. 'The future rests with the Free Churches': free church union and the Welsh revival
PART III: 'WHAT IS MORALLY WRONG CAN NEVER BE POLITICALLY RIGHT': THE CONSCIENCE OF DISSENT
24. 'The largest and widest church ever established': the influence of George Dawson
25. 'Once bit, twice shy': the Forster Education Act
26. 'A torrent of gin and beer': the Nonconformist revolt and liberal defeat
27. 'The right of the people to judge for themselves': Bulgaria and Ireland
28. 'A Mutual Benefit Association': trade unionists and employers
29. Making 'men moral by act of parliament': personal redemption versus environmental reformation
30. 'To reconstruct the existing organization of society': from philanthropy to christian socialism and the new liberalism
31. 'A most astonishing opening, furnished by the providence of God': imperialism and the missionary conscience
32. 'The thunder of British guns': Armenia and the Boer War
33. 'The descendants of men like Oliver Cromwell': the Balfour Education Act and the liberal landslide
Index