A study of growth and controversy in Victorian Methodism, through the records of the Local Preachers of the Oxford Wesleyan Circuit. Wesleyan Methodism was the largest Free Church denomination in Victorian Oxfordshire, with a presence in many towns and villages as well as in the city of Oxford and its growing suburbs. Crucial to the nurture and expansion of Methodism were the Local Preachers, lay volunteers who conducted most of the Sunday services in Methodist chapels. The quarterly Preachers' Meetings supervised the recruitment, training, deployment and discipline of these volunteers, and their minutes track the development of the denomination and the fortunes of individual preachers and preaching places across three-quarters of a century. The minutes of the Oxford Wesleyan Circuit Local Preachers' meetings from 1830 to 1902 are presented here in full, with annotations and biographical notes on the preachers. The introduction to the volume sets the scene by discussing the history of Methodism and the place of preaching in the Wesleyan movement. Martin Wellings is Superintendent of the Barnet and Queensbury Circuit of the Methodist Church and former Minister of Wesley Memorial Church, Oxford.

The aim of the book is to explore some of the contributions made by Protestant Nonconformity to Christian missions. The occasion of the conference which gave rise to the volume was the centenary of the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910, but the topics treated here deliberately range more widely, covering missions in Britain and the wider world from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. COMMENDATIONS "Martin Wellings is to be warmly thanked for gathering such an informative and stimulating collection of papers. They are scholarly and accessible, and deserve to be widely read." - Alan P.F. Sell, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK

This book offers a detailed analysis of one of the key episodes of twentieth-century ecumenism, focusing on the efforts made to reconcile the Church of England and the Methodist Church of Great Britain in the years since the First World War. Drawing on newly available archives as well as on a broad range of historical, theological, and liturgical expertise, the contributions explore what was attempted, why success proved elusive, and how the quest for unity was reconfigured into the twenty-first century. The volume sets contemporary ecumenical ambitions in historical context, explains the origins, course, and aftermath of the Anglican–Methodist ‘Conversations’ of 1955–72, retrieves their enduring global legacy, and explores the fraught nature of the ecumenical quest. It will be of key interest to scholars with an interest in ecumenism, Methodist studies, and church history.

This book offers a detailed analysis of one of the key episodes of twentieth-century ecumenism, focusing on the efforts made to reconcile the Church of England and the Methodist Church of Great Britain in the years since the First World War. Drawing on newly available archives as well as on a broad range of historical, theological, and liturgical expertise, the contributions explore what was attempted, why success proved elusive, and how the quest for unity was reconfigured into the twenty-first century. The volume sets contemporary ecumenical ambitions in historical context, explains the origins, course, and aftermath of the Anglican-Methodist 'Conversations' of 1955-72, retrieves their enduring global legacy, and explores the fraught nature of the ecumenical quest. It will be of key interest to scholars with an interest in ecumenism, Methodist studies, and church history.

In the closing years of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century Anglican Evangelicals faced a series of challenges. In responding to Anglo-Catholicism, liberal theology, Darwinism and biblical criticism, the unity and identity of the Evangelical school were severely tested.

This is a story about a strange encounter on the golf course with someone who, on the face of it, knows nothing about golf but who ends up teaching the author about the inner game and questioning his approach to golf and to life itself. It's not just about golf or sport, nor about improvement or progress or how to do something. If anything, it points to a way of living effortlessly that is free and harmonious, that is, to the essence of mindfulness and non-duality. Each of the nineteen chapters contains a lesson which the author palpably resists for the first few holes. But, gradually he comes to realise the profound truth in the teachings of the stranger and begins to understand the radical perspective of no one playing.

In the early hours of almost every morning during the Covid lockdown in the months of March and April 2021, these poems began mysteriously arriving - like persistent early morning visitors. Curiously, the author's wife was absent for the whole of this time, and much to her amusement, in her place lay an open notebook, a blank page and a pen. Soon nearly 40 poems filled the notebook - Martin never having written poetry in his life before. Although the pandemic provides the foreground for this collection of poems, they have also been prompted by timeless universal themes, symbolised in a snowdrop, a park bench or an olive tree; found in conversations about love and life and death, in news items and random images. But most of all arising out of that deep longing for union and freedom at the source of each of us. The poems are about what it means to be alive and deeply connected to the natural world. In so doing they go to the heart of mindful living and non-dual wisdom

An important contribution to the understanding of twentieth-century Anglicanism and evangelicalism This volume makes a considerable contribution to the understanding of twentieth-century Anglicanism and evangelicalism. It includes an expansive introduction which both engages with recent scholarship and challenges existing narratives. The book locates the diverse Anglican evangelical movement in the broader fields of the history of English Christianity and evangelical globalisation. Contributors argue that evangelicals often engaged constructively with the wider Church of England, long before the 1967 Keele Congress, and displayed a greater internal party unity than has previously been supposed. Other significant themes include the rise of various 'neo-evangelicalisms', charismaticism, lay leadership, changing conceptions of national identity, and the importance of generational shifts. The volume also provides an analysis of major organisations, conferences and networks, including the Keswick Convention, Islington Conference and Nationwide Festival of Light. ANDREW ATHERSTONE is tutor in history and doctrine, and Latimer research fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. JOHN MAIDEN is lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at the Open University. He is author of National Religion and the Prayer Book Controversy, 1927-1928 (The Boydell Press, 2009).

Sitting in the Stillness is a collection of stories from the therapy room. Each one invites the reader to go beyond these personal accounts to the universal, beyond the agitations of the mind to an infinite stillness of being. The stories include examples from group therapy, mindfulness groups, family and couples' therapy and demonstrate our fundamental interconnectedness. 'Insightful, practically useful, even enlightening. We are led along a less `self-centred' path with a delightfully light touch.' Nigel Wellings, author of Why Can't I Meditate?