This chapter deals with the institutional history of Nuer Christianity and examines how various interconnections that were made possible through people’s movement across the frontierlands contributed to the development of churches and the circulation of Christian knowledge. It starts in the early twentieth century with the coming of missionaries to southern Sudan and explores the introduction of Seventh-day Adventism in the 1970s and the consequent emergence of Messianic groups out of the Adventist church since the 1990s. The chapter demonstrates how claims of biblical authenticity (that is, of being the ’true church’) fuelled schisms and institutional fragmentation. The chapter is concerned with both the history and proliferation of Messianic institutions in Gambella, and the ways in which Messianics thought about the history and biblical indexicality of their churches, as institutions that traced their roots to the Holy Bible.

This chapter introduces the main themes and arguments of the book. It opens by introducing the Church of God (Seventh Day) and its offshoots in the frontierlands of Gambella, and the preoccupation of Nuer Messianics with truth and biblical authenticity. It then discusses why and how exploring the ideas and practices of Nuer Messianics in the Ethiopia-South Sudan borderlands contributes to the study of religious mediation and to the literatures on African born-again Christianity, African Judaising movements, and spiritual life in Ethiopia and South Sudan.

This chapter situates the study within a broader historical, political, and scholarly context, and presents the methodology upon which it draws. First, the chapter sketches the history of Gambella as a site of encounter between the Ethiopian state and Nuer society and examines the historical and anthropological scholarships on Ethiopia’s peripheries and on the eastern frontier of Nuerland. It then discusses my own encounter with Gambella, the context and political environment in which research took place, the local religious landscape and the place of Messianic Jews in it, and the ‘data collection’ methods and research approach deployed. The final sections of the chapter explore my positionality in Gambella, as a Jewish Israeli researcher among Messianic Jews, and the sort of intersubjective encounters that informed this study.

The primary source at the center of this chapter’s analysis is produced by a Colombian evangelical pioneer and focuses on the expulsion of his family and the evangelical church in the village of La Tulia, Valle, Colombia, in 1949. The autobiographical account, written some years after the event, recounts memories of the experience and its interpretation considering what it meant for him to be an evangelical Christian in Colombia in the mid-twentieth century. The expulsion occurred against the backdrop of a struggle between liberals and conservatives that involved the Catholic Church and the evangelicals, resulting in an unraveling of the social fabric of the communities where the evangelical presence was very important. Pedro Aguirre, author of the text, was the founder of the town of La Tulia, Valle, and a social and liberal leader who, after having supported the construction of the Catholic temple, abandoned Catholicism for Protestantism. The analysis aims to identify the elements at play in the construction of evangelical memories, which will facilitate not only the use of the source itself but also a deeper understanding of the context in which it was produced.

Although basic freedoms (such as freedom of thought) in Nicaragua were decreed in 1869, their implementation did not have major repercussions until 1893 with the approval of La Liberrima – an important transformation in the country. Its introduction reflected a great change in the relationship of religion and the Constitutions of 1838 and 1858. An analysis of La Liberrima is necessary to study the original development of Protestantism as a social phenomenon within modern Nicaragua. Following the irruption of radical liberalism at the end of the nineteenth century, Protestantism expanded and developed new forms of association. In this context, the emergence and meaning of the phenomenon can be linked to modernizing forms of civil participation that created local bases and fomented its expansion including churches, schools, health-related projects, and publications. The chapter also includes an examination of a Protestant publication, principally the magazine Antorcha, to highlight the evolution of Protestantism as a historical process. Based on these documents, this work aims to broadly assess the emergence of local Protestant actions that developed in a less than welcoming environment.

This chapter presents El Evangelista (1877–1886), the first Protestant, Spanish-language newspaper in the Río de la Plata region of Argentina as well as two articles that appeared in El Estandarte (1883–1901) and El Atalaya (1901–1909). These publications were among the most influential journalistic organs that Protestants used for the initial dissemination of their ideas in the port cities of Buenos Aires, Rosario de Santa Fe, and Montevideo in the period 1870–1900. Using these sources, this chapter analyzes how the anti-Catholic discourse wielded by Protestantism contributed to a growing crisis of meaning by questioning Catholic society, its mediations such as the miracle of the mass, prayers for the dead, relics, the cult of saints, the monastic way of life, and its agents. This challenge aimed to establish a religious reformation that would introduce a new moral order to the society and culture of the region.

Initially, perhaps even unknowingly, the young Mexican Dominican Manuel Aguas was drawn to the path of Martin Luther. Like the German theologian, Aguas read the Bible and his ruminations convinced him to break with the Roman Catholic Church. In response, the ecclesiastical institution excommunicated him. At the heart of this chapter is a letter in which Manuel Aguas provides an account of his conversion to Protestantism. The account caused a great commotion in Mexico City. Aguas's writing was published in El Monitor Republicano on April 26, 1871. Despite the influence of Aguas’ ideas, there is no doubt that he benefited from the past efforts of various converts that attempted to establish Protestantism in Mexico City. In this sense, he fertilized a ground prepared by others but added an activism that, within a few months, garnered public attention for the challenges it posed to the religious and cultural establishment of the time. His account makes visible the construction of a marginalized faith through his vigorous attempts to defend its legitimacy in an environment that overtly denied it.

This book’s Introduction sets out the key intellectual and historical contexts for its argument. It shows that religious belief gained an important cultural emphasis after the Reformation and that it was considered to be distinct from other kinds of belief or assent. Engaging with scholarly discussions of belief, this introduction suggests that the period from around 1580 to the 1650s witnessed an attempt to investigate what was particular about a specifically religious kind of belief. Its certainty and spiritual origin were compared to, and contrasted with, other kinds of assent that were generated by probable forms of argument. An important and widespread way of effecting this comparison involved considering religious belief alongside the kinds of assent generated in legal settings – when witness evidence is evaluated for its credibility. The introduction roots this discursive method in contemporary legal culture, before surveying recent scholarship on literary culture, law and religion.

The sale, twice, of a Medici cabinet ordered for an English estate introduces the modern idea of heritage, initiated by Edmund Burke. It covers Protestant narratives and customary laws, and concludes with Alasdair MacIntyre’s thesis about narrative and identity.

Chapter 8 examines a neo-Latin university drama, Christus Triumphans, which was written by the English Protestant John Foxe while he was living in exile during the reign of Mary I, and which depicts Mater Ecclesia (Mother Church) as the mother and schoolmistress of the entire human race. The chapter argues that Foxe uses his dramatic work to forge a diverse community of Continental and English Protestants into the impassioned body of the Church as Christ’s bride, who desires the return of Christ and an end to all tyrannical violence.

Chapter 2 examines the balance between praise, precept, and criticism in comparisons of the dedicatees of translations with exemplary figures from ancient history. It argues that Anthony Cope’s The History of Hannibal and Scipio (1544) and Gabriel Harvey’s marginalia similarly applied Livy’s History of Rome as a guide to military action in Tudor England, but Cope also made a principled attempt to influence the direction of religious and political policy. The five Plutarchan Lives presented in manuscript to Henry VIII by Henry Parker, Lord Morley during the 1530s and 1540s rebuked the increasingly tyrannical king. William Master’s manuscript Life of Scipio mined the text for military stratagems as well as moral and other lessons. Thomas North’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (1579) supported the religio-political agenda of forward Protestants under the leadership of Leicester and Shakespeare’s Roman plays responded to North’s application of the Lives to Elizabethan England in their exploration of masculine martial valour and heroism.

Chapter 4 examines the translation of ancient Greek oratory, focusing on Demosthenes and Aeschines. John Christopherson’s Latin manuscript version of Against Leptines (c. 1544) highlights the force of rhetoric in Tudor warfare and politics. Thomas Wilson’s The … orations of Demosthenes (1570) draws on Demosthenes’ call to arms against Philip II of Macedon to warn against his namesake, Philip II of Spain, presenting Demosthenes as a model for Elizabethan counsellors. Wilson also played a key role in the posthumous publication of a Latin translation of the same speeches by Nicholas Carr to continue the campaign against Philip of Spain, though Carr’s translation had its origins in a manuscript that equates oratory with the political liberty and popular rule of ancient Athens and the Roman republic. John Osborne’s English manuscript translations of Demosthenes’s Against Leptines (1582) and Aeschines’s On the Embassy (1583) apply ancient Greek oratory to the political debate of the Elizabethan House of Commons and give a remarkably positive account of Athenian democracy.

This chapter examines Northern Ireland’s literary culture from the 1930s to the 1960s, highlighting how writers identifying as ‘Irish’ engaged with British institutions like the Left Book Club (LBC) and the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA). This reflects the complex identities characterising Protestant identity before and after the Second World War. During this period, the Belfast and broader Ulster context of the ‘Progressive bookmen’ represented a vibrant yet overlooked literary environment, challenging the narrow perceptions of a bigoted provincial atmosphere.Louis MacNeice (1907–63) was the most prominent of the writers discussed, alongside other influential figures like John Boyd (1912–2002), W. R. ‘Bertie’ Rodgers (1909–69), and John Hewitt (1907–87). All were steeped in leftist thought and opposed the Ulster Unionist establishment. The passing of the Flags and Emblems Act of 1954, codifying British symbols, and the rising tide of Irish nationalism posed significant challenges.Despite this, these Protestant writers advanced their values in union halls, WEA classes, pubs, and media outlets. The chapter explores their connections to local publications, the Labour movement, the Spanish Civil War, nationalism, and the BBC. Ultimately, while the Northern Irish conflict overshadowed the Progressive Bookmen, this chapter highlights their rich literary heritage and complex identities.

Justin Reynolds narrates how Christians argued for religious freedom in rights terms at a moment of transatlantic hegemony in the 1940s, divorcing protection for religious practice from that for religious belief. That required abandonment of older models of Christian politics, but the results have been fateful for the regulation since of non-Christians around the world.

This chapter moves from examining institutional changes to the cultural history of morals and emotions, by examining how the evolution of the idea of the self came to supplant the institutional mediation of local law courts. It traces how three concepts – self-love, happiness, and interest – were developed and disseminated as religious and interpersonal ethics, all related to the development of the self within the singular mind. This was a crucial move that allowed the idea and practice of savings to move from taking the form of a debt owed, to the interest-bearing capital described above. It also validated the crucial concept of interest within religion, and this was related to the increasing moral acceptance of the interest rate. Although a legal interest rate had existed from the Elizabethan Act of 1571, interest rates are difficult to find mentioned explicitly in the seventeenth century. By the eighteenth, however, they had become commonplace.