Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The thought-world of early evangelicalism
- 2 Spener and the origins of church pietism
- 3 The mystic way or the mystic ways?
- 4 The development of pietism in the Reformed churches
- 5 The Reformed tradition in Britain and America
- 6 Zinzendorf
- 7 John Wesley
- 8 Jonathan Edwards
- 9 The disintegration of the old evangelicalism
- Conclusion
- Select and user-friendly bibliography
- Index
5 - The Reformed tradition in Britain and America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The thought-world of early evangelicalism
- 2 Spener and the origins of church pietism
- 3 The mystic way or the mystic ways?
- 4 The development of pietism in the Reformed churches
- 5 The Reformed tradition in Britain and America
- 6 Zinzendorf
- 7 John Wesley
- 8 Jonathan Edwards
- 9 The disintegration of the old evangelicalism
- Conclusion
- Select and user-friendly bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Reformed tradition in Britain was singular without being insular. At the end of the sixteenth century the Church of England was commonly reckoned among the Reformed churches of Europe, though the party in it wishing for further reformation on the lines of the best Reformed churches in Europe was never in control. These Puritans were for the most part establishment men. Thus the confessedly Reformed party in the Church of England, whose literature was always influential abroad, was not in the position of either of the main groups of Reformed churches on the continent; it was neither setting the tone in a church establishment, nor was it a persecuted minority. Under Scottish armed force the very high Reformed Westminster Confession was adopted in 1643, but from the beginning its supremacy was challenged by the power of the New Model Army in which Independents and sectaries were strong, and the hopes of the Presbyterians who contributed powerfully to the return of Charles II in 1660 were badly frustrated by the duplicity of the King and a sort of White Terror launched under the aegis of the Cavalier Parliament. The famous 2000 clergy expelled from the Church for refusing to accept the Restoration Prayer Book formed the nucleus of a new kind of nonconformity; and both they and the congregations they gathered were subject to a good deal of persecution over the next generation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Early EvangelicalismA Global Intellectual History, 1670–1789, pp. 85 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006