From a small group of devout Puritan settlers, the USA ultimately became the richest, most powerful Empire in the history of the world. Yet it is now in a process of implosion and decay. This book, inspired by Frankfurt School Critical Theory, offers a unique historical, cultural and characterological analysis of American national character and its underlying psychodynamics.

This book reconsiders the career of an important, controversial, but neglected figure in this history of Irish Presbyterianism. The Revd Isaac Nelson is mostly remembered for his opposition to the evangelical revival of 1859, but this book demonstrates that there was much more to Nelson's career. Nelson started out as a protege of Henry Cooke and as an exemplary young evangelical minister. Upon aligning himself with the Belfast Anti-Slavery Society and joining forces with American abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, Nelson emerged as a powerful voice against compromise with slaveholders. One of the central objectives of this book is to show that anti-slavery, especially his involvement with the 'Send Back the Money' controversy in the Free Church of Scotland and the debate over fellowship with slaveholders at the Evangelical Alliance, was crucially important to the development of Nelson into one of Irish Presbyterianism's most controversial figures. His later opposition to the 1859 Revival has often been understood as being indicative of Nelson's opposition to evangelicalism. This book argues that such a conclusion is mistaken and that Nelson opposed the Revival as a Presbyterian evangelical. His later involvement with the Land League and the Irish Home Rule movement, including his tenure as the Member of Parliament for County Mayo, could be easily dismissed as an entirely discreditable affair. While avoiding romantic nostalgia in relation to Nelson's nationalism, this book argues that Nelson's basis for advocating Home Rule was not as peculiar as it might first appear.

Updated edition of classic introduction to the essential tenets of Calvinistic theology: its history and content, a biblical defense, and a guide to further study.

In Calvin's Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church, Matthew J. Tuininga explores a little appreciated dimension of John Calvin's political thought, his two kingdoms theology, as a model for constructive Christian participation in liberal society. Widely misunderstood as a proto-political culture warrior, due in part to his often misinterpreted role in controversies over predestination and the heretic Servetus, Calvin articulated a thoughtful approach to public life rooted in his understanding of the gospel and its teaching concerning the kingdom of God. He staked his ministry in Geneva on his commitment to keeping the church distinct from the state, abandoning simplistic approaches that placed one above the other, while rejecting the temptations of sectarianism or separatism. This revealing analysis of Calvin's vision offers timely guidance for Christians seeking a mode of faithful, respectful public engagement in democratic, pluralistic communities today.

This Companion offers an introduction to Reformed theology, one of the most historically important, ecumenically active, and currently generative traditions of doctrinal enquiry, by way of reflecting upon its origins, its development, and its significance. The first part, Theological Topics, indicates the distinct array of doctrinal concerns which gives coherence over time to the identity of this tradition in all its diversity. The second part, Theological Figures, explores the life and work of a small number of theologians who have not only worked within this tradition, but have constructively shaped and inspired it in vital ways. The final part, Theological Contexts, considers the ways in which the resultant Reformed sensibilities in theology have had a marked impact both upon theological and ecclesiastical landscapes in different places and upon the wider societal landscapes of history. The result is a fascinating and compelling guide to this dynamic and vibrant theological tradition.

Histories of missions to American Indian communities usually tell a sad and predictable story about the destructive impact of missionary work on Native culture and religion. Many historians conclude that American Indian tribes who have maintained a cultural identity have done so only because missionaries were unable to destroy it. In Creating Christian Indians, Bonnie Sue Lewis relates how the Nez Perce and the Dakota Indians became Presbyterians yet incorporated Native culture and tradition into their new Christian identities. Lewis focuses on the rise of Native clergy and their forging of Christian communities based on American Indian values and notions of kinship and leadership. Originally, mission work among the Nez Perces and Dakotas revolved around white missionaries, but Christianity truly took root in nineteenth-century American Indian communities with the ordination of Indian clergy. Native pastors saw in Christianity a universal message of hope and empowerment. Educated and trained within their own communities, Native ministers were able to preach in their own languages. They often acted as cultural brokers between Indian and white societies, shaping Native Presbyterianism and becoming recognized leaders in both tribal and Presbyterian circles. In 1865 the Presbyterian Church ordained John B. Renville as the first Dakota Indian minister, and in 1879 Robert Williams became the first ordained Nez Perce. By 1930, nearly forty Dakotas, sixteen Nez Perces, a Spokane, and a Makah had been ordained. Lewis has mined church and archival records, including letters from Native ministers, to reveal ways in which early Indian pastors left a heritage of committed Presbyterian congregations and a vibrant spiritual legacy among their descendants. Bonnie Sue Lewis is Assistant Professor of Mission and Native American Christianity at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary in Iowa.

In On Time, Punctuality and Discipline in Early Modern Calvinism, Max Engammare explores how the sixteenth-century Protestant reformers of Geneva, France, London, and Bern internalized a new concept of time. Applying a moral and spiritual code to the course of the day, they regulated their relationship with time, which was, in essence, a new relationship with God. As Calvin constantly reminded his followers, God watches his faithful every minute. Come Judgement Day, the faithful in turn will have to account for each minute. Engammare argues that the inhabitants of Calvin's Geneva invented the new habit of being on time, a practice unknown in antiquity. It was also fundamentally different from notions of time in the monastic world of the medieval period and unknown to contemporaries such as Erasmus, Vives, the early Jesuits, Rabelais, Ronsard, or Montaigne. Engammare shows that punctuality did not proceed from technical innovation. Rather, punctuality was above all a spiritual, social, and disciplinary virtue.

Since its original publication in 1985, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment has come to be regarded as a classic work in 18th-century Scottish history and Enlightenment studies. It depicts Hugh Blair, Alexander Carlyle, Adam Ferguson, John Home, and William Robertson as an intimate coterie that played a central role in the Scottish Enlightenment, seen here not only as an intellectual but as a cultural movement. These men were among the leaders in the University of Edinburgh, in the Moderate party in the Church of Scotland, and in Edinburgh's thriving clubs. They used their institutional influence and their books, plays, sermons, and pamphlets to promulgate the tenets of Moderatism, including polite Presbyterianism, Christian Stoicism, civic humanism, social and political conservatism, and the tolerant, cosmopolitan values of the international Enlightenment. Using a wide variety of sources and an interdisciplinary methodology, this collective biography portrays these 'Moderate Iiterati' as zealous activists for the cause in which they believed, ranging from support for a Scots militia, Ossian, and Roman Catholic relief to opposition to the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 and the American and French Revolutions

Woodford's diary, here published in full for the first time with an introduction, provides a unique insight into the puritan psyche and way of life. Woodford is remarkable for the consistency of his worldview, interpreting all experience through the spectacles of godly predestinarianism. His journal is a fascinating source for the study of opposition to the Personal Rule of Charles I and its importance in the formation of Civil War allegiance, demonstrating that the Popish Plot version of politics, held by parliamentary opposition leaders in the 1620s, had by the 1630s been adopted by provincial people from the lower classes. Woodford went further than some of his contemporaries in taking the view that, even before the outbreak of the Bishops' Wars, government policies had discredited episcopacy, and cast grave doubt on the king's religious soundness. Conversely, he regarded parliament as the seat of virtue and potential saviour of the nation.

Originally published in 1938, this book gives an engaging account of the main controversies within Dutch Calvinism between 1600 and 1650. Although the relation of Church and state was debated throughout the seventeenth century in the Netherlands, two disputes in the first half were most significant because both began in the Calvinist Church itself. The first of these disputes arose out of the Arminian challenge in the Calvinist Church and lasted from 1609 to 1618, when the Synod of Dort expelled the Arminians from the Church and Maurice the Stadholder drove the leaders out of the Netherlands. The second dispute began in 1637 when Vedelius taught at Deventer a theory of the Christian magistracy which was alien to the Calvinist tradition since 1618. Detailed information is provided on both of these controversies and the surrounding historical context.

The Revolution of 1688-90 was accompanied in Scotland by a Church Settlement which dismantled the Episcopalian governance of the church. Clergy were ousted and liturgical traditions were replaced by the new Presbyterian order. As Episcopalians, non-jurors and Catholics were side-lined under the new regime, they drew on their different confessional and liturgical inheritances, pre- and post-Reformation, to respond to ecclesiastical change and inform their support of the movement to restore the Stuarts. In so doing, they had a profound effect on the ways in which worship was conducted and considered in Britain and beyond.

Andrew Reed (1787-1862) was a Congregational minister, an energetic philanthropist and a highly successful fundraiser. He began to study theology at Hackney Academy in 1807 and was ordained minister in 1811, serving in this role until 1861. He helped to found numerous charitable institutions, most notably the London Orphan Asylum, the Asylum for Fatherless Children, the Asylum for Idiots, the Infant Orphan Asylum, and the Hospital for Incurables. In addition to his charitable work, he found time to write. He compiled a hymn book, and published sermons, devotional books and an account of his visit to America in 1834, when he received a Doctorate of Divinity from Yale. This biography of Reed, compiled by two of his sons, was first published in 1863. It describes his many achievements, using selections from Reed's own journals, and includes a list of his publications.

The author of this 1930 volume maintains that the first two and a half years of the pontificate of Pius IV, during which the continuation of the Council of Trent and the maintenance of its earlier decrees were secured against strong French and German opposition, constituted the critical period which finally determined the ultimate orientation of the Counter-Reformation. This thesis is worked out in detail in regard to the French efforts to prevent the continuation of the Tridentine Council and to force the Counter-Reformation into different channels from those desired by Rome, efforts which were largely inspired by the Cardinal of Lorraine around whom the narrative is hung. In addition, an attempt is made to appreciate the Cardinal's personality and to understand his ecclesiastical standpoint.

Originally published during the early part of the twentieth century, the Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature were designed to provide concise introductions to a broad range of topics. They were written by experts for the general reader and combined a comprehensive approach to knowledge with an emphasis on accessibility. The English Puritans, written by John Brown and first published in 1910, presents an historical overview of the rise, growth and decline of the Puritan movement in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Originally published during the early part of the twentieth century, the Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature were designed to provide concise introductions to a broad range of topics. They were written by experts for the general reader and combined a comprehensive approach to knowledge with an emphasis on accessibility. First published in 1911, this small volume by Lord Balfour of Burleigh traces the history and development of Presbyterianism in Scotland from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

Originally published in 1935, this book examines the history of the English Presbyterian movement in terms of its connection with the surrounding cultural environment. Covering the period between 1662 and the formation of Unitarianism during the early nineteenth century, it provides a detailed analysis of the movement and its ideas. The relationship between Presbyterian thought and contemporary developments in science and philosophy is given particular attention. From this perspective, the history of the Presbyterian movement can be seen as forming part of the larger question of the relationship between secular learning and religious credenda. This is a fascinating book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in religious or cultural history.

This groundbreaking book explores the migration of Calvinist refugees in Europe during the Reformation, across a century of persecution, exile and minority existence. Ole Peter Grell follows the fortunes of some of the earliest Reformed merchant families, forced to flee from the Tuscan city of Lucca during the 1560s, through their journey to France during the Wars of Religion to the St Bartholomew Day Massacre and their search for refuge in Sedan. He traces the lives of these interconnected families over three generations as they settled in European cities from Geneva to London, marrying into the diaspora of Reformed merchants. Based on a potent combination of religion, commerce and family networks, these often wealthy merchants and highly skilled craftsmen were amongst the most successful of early modern capitalists. Brethren in Christ shows how this interconnected network, reinforced through marriage and enterprise, forged the backbone of international Calvinism in Reformation Europe.

In 1593, in response to strict censorship in England, English Puritans in Scotland printed a volume of letters, petitions and arguments titled Parte of a Register, which was smuggled into England. Manuscripts for a second book were collected but never published, and were later acquired by Roger Morrice (1628 1702), the Puritan diarist. They are now housed at Dr Williams's Library in London. This is a two-volume study of the 257 documents, which date from 1570 to 1590. They include Puritan letters, petitions, arguments and records of persecution by ecclesiastical authorities, and together constitute valuable evidence of the aims and concerns of the early Puritan movement. Compiled by the ecclesiastical historian Albert Peel (1886 1949) and first published in 1915, this catalogue itemises the contents of the collection. Volume 1 contains an introduction discussing the history of the manuscripts and the first part of the list of documents.

Dutch society has enjoyed a reputation, or notoriety, for permissiveness from the sixteenth century to present times. The Dutch Republic in the Golden Age was the only society that tolerated religious dissenters of all persuasions in early modern Europe, despite being committed to a strictly Calvinist public Church. Professors R. Po-chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop have brought together a group of leading historians from the US, the UK and the Netherlands to probe the history and myth of this Dutch tradition of religious tolerance. This 2002 collection of outstanding essays reconsiders and revises contemporary views of Dutch tolerance. Taken as a whole, the volume's innovative scholarship offers unexpected insights into this important topic in religious and cultural history.