This is a study of the 66 bishops of James I. Kenneth Fincham surveys the range of their activities and functions, including their part in central politics, their role in local society, their work as diocesan governors enforcing moral and spiritual discipline and their supervision of the parish clergy. Dr Fincham argues that the accession of James I marked the restoration of episcopal fortunes at court and in the localities, seen most clearly in the revival of the court prelate. The Jacobean episcopate as a group were active pastors, working under the watchful eye of an informed supreme governor. During these years, the image of the bishop as preaching pastor won widespread acceptance and evangelical churchmanship flourished, to be challenged in the second half of the reign by Arminian prelates. Dr Fincham's analysis of the early 17th-century episcopate, grounded in contemporary sources, reveals much about the church of James I, the doctrinal divisions of the period and the origins of Laudian government in the 1630s. "Prelate as Pastor" offers a new perspective on the controversies of early Stuart religious history.

The legendary Episcopal Bishop tells of his lifelong struggle to champion an authentic christianity based on love, not hatred.

The Anglican conflict over homosexuality has drawn worldwide interest and divided the church. However, conflict within Christianity is not new. This book traces the steps by which the crisis emerged, and reveals the deeper debates within the church which underlie both the current controversy and much earlier splits. William L. Sachs contends that the present debate did not begin with opposition to homosexuality or in advocacy of it. He argues that, like past tensions, it originates in the diverging local contexts in which the faith is practiced, and their differing interpretations of authority and communion. In the aftermath of colonialism, activists and reformers have taken on prominent roles for and against the status quo. The crisis reveals a Church in search of a new, global consensus about the appropriate forms of belief and mission.

In 11 essays by leading Anglican scholars, this book clarifies what sets Anglicanism apart from other denominations and offers clarity for the future of the communion.

On the eve of WWI the well-known explorer and writer Sir Clements Markham decided to pay tribute to his father, the Reverend David Markham, by putting pen to paper. In tracing his father's life story he provided a detailed account of his life and work at Stillingfleet, Great Horkesley, and Windsor, and his interactions with an extensive list of friends and family. As a well-connected, highly-educated and wealthy individual, David Markham was able to indulge his passion for travelling, collecting, and painting. The family home was filled with cabinets of coins, fossils, shells and other curiosities, as well as many fine works of art. His keen interest in heraldry and family history meant a great deal of time being devoted to tracing the rich history of the family. Clements Markham's story of his father's life provides the reader with a rich depiction of a true Victorian antiquarian: someone with a lifelong passion for learning and interest in a broad spectrum of fields. In doing so he has provided the reader with a rich source of Victorian local, family and social history.

The Anglican chaplains who served in the Great War were changed by their experience of total war. They returned determined to revitalise the Anglican Church in Britain and to create a society which would be a living memorial to the men who had died. The chaplains who served in the army returned to a wide variety of church posts, bringing with them their experiences and expectations. They were to serve as parish priests, in cathedral chapters, teaching in schools and universities, as chaplains in prisons and hospitals and as full time workers for national institutions such as Toc H and the Industrial Christian Fellowship. A substantial number were destined to achieve positions of significant influence as bishops, deans, chaplains to the King and to be instrumental in matters concerning the influence of the church in industrial and political issues. These chaplains will be shown to have had an influence on Prayer Book revision, developments in theological thinking, moves towards church unity as well as having an important part to play in the resolving of industrial tension. Changes in society such as new divorce laws, the acceptance of contraception, and the responsible use of new media were aspects of the inter-war years which former chaplains were to involve themselves in. They were also influential in shaping attitudes to rituals of remembrance in the 1920s and attitudes to pacifism in the 1930s. Given the changes that occurred in the Church of England, institutionally, liturgically and in its attitudes to a rapidly changing society, it is important that the role of former chaplains should be examined and their significance analysed. This book argues that in the inter-war years the impact of former chaplains was enhanced by their experiences in an unprecedented global conflict, which gave their actions and opinions more moral authority than would otherwise been the case. This question of the impact of former chaplains is considered in the context of debates about the effect that the war had on British society as a whole and on the Church of England In particular. The inter-war years have been described as"the long peace". As the former chaplains were coming to terms with the way in which the Great War had affected their lives and ministries the threat of the next war loomed. In the twenty years after their wartime chaplaincies, former chaplains had gone some way to fulfilling the hopes and aspirations articulated on their return from the front and could claim to have contributed greatly to both developments in the Anglican Church and in wider society.

This book examines the various contexts - historical, social, cultural, and ideological - which have shaped the modern efforts of the Anglican tradition at self-understanding. The author’s thesis is that modernity and world mission have changed Anglicanism in ways that are deep and pervasive, just as other Christian traditions have also been profoundly affected by worldwide extension. In the case of the Anglican tradition, however, a distinctive way of relating Christianity to local culture and a distinctive kind of indigenous leader produced a church identity different from other forms of Christendom. Dr Sachs’ aim is to contrast Anglicanism both with the style of Roman Catholicism and with the characteristically Protestant emphasis upon individual conversion apart from concern for the Church and its tradition.

This book explores the culture of conformity to the Church of England and its liturgy in the period after the Reformation and before the outbreak of the Civil War. It provides a necessary corrective to our view of religion in that period through a serious exploration of the laypeople who conformed, out of conviction, to the Book of Common Prayer. These "prayer book Protestants" formed a significant part of the spectrum of society in Tudor and Stuart England, yet until now they have remained an almost completely uninvestigated group.