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Books > Christianity > Christian institutions & organizations > General
Religion in Enlightenment England introduces its readers to a rich
array of BritishChristian texts published between 1660 and 1750.
The anthology documents the arc of Christian writings from the
reestablishment of the Church of England to the rise of the
Methodist movement in the middle of the eighteenth century. The
Enlightenment era witnessed the explosion ofmass print culture and
the unprecedented expansion of literacy across society. These
changes transformed many inherited Christian genresasuch as the
sermon and the devotional manualawhile also generating new ones,
from the modern church hymn to spiritual autobiography. The authors
included in this collection confronted the rise of modern science
and forged new rules of modern toleration.Their writing reveals the
unprecedented spiritual authority assumed by women and helps
explain how emotion moved to the center of religious experience.
Religion in Enlightenment England captures the literary energy and
excitement unleashed by the Enlightenment itself: authorsengageone
another in spirited dialogue that pits reason against revelation,
religious conformity against dissent, innovation against tradition,
andFreethinking against natural religion. An indispensable asset
for any scholar's library, the anthology includes texts by William
Law, John Bunyan, Elizabeth Singer Rowe, John and Charles Wesley,
Richard Baxter, John Toland, Mary Astell, Daniel Defoe, John
Norris, Margaret Fell Fox, Isaac Watts, Thomas Traherne, John
Tillotson, William Penn, and Anne Conway.
This volume brings together scholars to explore the challenges of
translating Christianity. Christianity has been the impulse behind
the creation of more dictionaries and grammars of the world's
languages than any other force in history. More people pray and
worship in more languages in Christianity than in any other
religion. It is a religion without a revealed language; a faith
characterized by 'the triumph of its translatability'. Christianity
is also a translated religion in a very different sense. Many of
its ritual practices have been predicated on the translation of
material objects, such as relics. Their movement in time and space
reveals shifting lines of power and influence in illuminating ways.
Translation can be understood not only linguistically and
physically but also in ecclesiastical and metaphorical terms, for
instance, in the handing on of authority from one place or person
to another, or the appropriation of rituals in different contexts.
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