Dr Hindmarsh draws upon extensive archival and antiquarian sources to provide a serious, scholarly consideration of the life and religious thought of John Newton (1725-1807). In addition, he uses the theme of Newton as a 'sort of middle man' to explore the religious understanding of a whole generation who knew themselves as 'evangelical' although this was different from those who later adopted the term as a badge of partisan loyalty. The author shows how Newton is related to other Church of England evangelicals, Methodists, and various Dissenting bodies, and how his life sheds light on little explored aspects of the Evangelical Revival which contribute to an understanding and reassessment of the eighteenth-century church. In addition to discussion of themes in historical theology, pastoralia, and spirituality, an analysis of conversion narrative, the familiar letter, and hymnody contribute to an understanding of the relationship between religion and culture more generally.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thousands of ordinary women and men experienced evangelical conversion and turned to a certain form of spiritual autobiography to make sense of their lives. This book traces the rise and progress of conversion narrative as a unique form of spiritual autobiography in early modern England. After outlining the emergence of the genre in the seventeenth century and the revival of the form in the journals of the leaders of the Evangelical Revival, the central chapters of the book examine extensive archival sources to show the subtly different forms of narrative identity that appeared among Wesleyan Methodists, Moravians, Anglicans, Baptists, and others. Attentive to the unique voices of pastors and laypeople, women and men, Western and non-Western peoples, the book establishes the cultural conditions under which the genre proliferated.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thousands of ordinary women and men experienced evangelical conversion and turned to a certain form of spiritual autobiography to make sense of their lives. This book traces the rise and progress of conversion narrative as a unique form of spiritual autobiography in early modern England. After outlining the emergence of the genre in the seventeenth century and the revival of the form in the journals of the leaders of the Evangelical Revival, the central chapters of the book examine extensive archival sources to show the subtly different forms of narrative identity that appeared among Wesleyan Methodists, Moravians, Anglicans, Baptists, and others. Attentive to the unique voices of pastors and laypeople, women and men, Western and non-Western peoples, the book establishes the cultural conditions under which the genre proliferated.