A compelling study of Anglican Evangelicalism in the Age of Wilberforce revealing its potency as a political machine whose reach extended into every area of the British establishment and its nascent Empire.

This book is the first account of British Protestant conversion initiatives directed towards continental Europe between 1600 and 1900. Continental Europe was considered a missionary land—another periphery of the world, whose centre was imperial Britain. British missions to Europe were informed by religious experiments in America, Africa, and Asia, rendering these offensives against Europe a true form of "imaginary colonialism". British Protestant missionaries often understood themselves to be at the forefront of a civilising project directed at Catholics (and sometimes even at other Protestants). Their mission was further reinforced by Britain becoming a land of compassionate refuge for European dissenters and exiles. This book engages with the myth of International Protestantism, questioning its early origins and its narrative of transnational belonging, while also interrogating Britain as an imagined Protestant land of hope and glory. In the history of western Christianities, "converting Europe" had a role that has not been adequately investigated. This is the story of the attempted, and ultimately failed, effort to convert a continent.

A compelling study of Anglican Evangelicalism in the Age of Wilberforce revealing its potency as a political machine whose reach extended into every area of the British establishment and its nascent Empire. SHORTLISTED for the EHS Book Prize 2020 The moralism that characterized the decades either side of 1800 - the so-called 'Age of William Wilberforce' - has long been regarded as having a massive impact on British culture. Yet the reasons why Wilberforce and his Evangelical contemporaries were so influential politically and in the wider public sphere have never been properly understood. Converting Britannia shows for thefirst time how and why religious reformism carried such weight. Evangelicalism, it argues, was not just an innovative social phenomenon, but also a political machine that exploited establishment strengths to replicate itself at home and internationally. The book maps networks that spanned the churches, universities, business, armed forces and officialdom, connecting London and the regions with Europe and the world, from business milieux in the Cityof London and elsewhere through the Royal Navy, the Colonial Office and East India and Sierra Leone companies. Revealing how religion drove debates about British history and identity in the first half of the nineteenth century, itthrows new light not just on the networks themselves, but on cheap print, mass-production and the public sphere: the interconnecting technologies that sustained religion in a rapidly modernizing age and projected it into new contexts abroad. GARETH ATKINS is a Bye-Fellow at Queens' College, University of Cambridge.

This readable survey on the history of missions tells the story of pivotal turning points in the expansion of Christianity, enabling readers to grasp the big picture of missional trends and critical developments. Alice Ott examines twelve key points in the growth of Christianity across the globe from the Jerusalem Council to Lausanne '74, an approach that draws on her many years of classroom teaching. Each chapter begins with a close-up view of a particularly compelling and paradigmatic episode in Christian history before panning out for a broader historical outlook. The book draws deeply on primary sources and covers some topics not addressed in similar volumes, such as the role of British abolitionism on mission to Africa and the relationship between imperialism and mission. It demonstrates that the expansion of Christianity was not just a Western-driven phenomenon; rather, the gospel spread worldwide through the efforts of both Western and non-Western missionaries and through the crucial ministry of indigenous lay Christians, evangelists, and preachers. This fascinating account of worldwide Christianity is suitable not only for the classroom but also for churches, workshops, and other seminars.

Between 1756 and 1840, philanthropy in the British world grew from the domain of small, associational committees to a vast enterprise of philanthropic and humanitarian societies with global reach. British Philanthropy in the Globalizing World tells the story of this movement, from its inception in small networks of mercantile and religious entrepreneurs to its signal projects and achievements in the abolition of slavery, in evangelical missionary societies, Bible societies, and in the early indigenous rights movement. It traces the lives and networks of hundreds of philanthropists across four generations, showing how their social, religious, economic, intellectual, and cultural worlds intersected to foster philanthropic innovation through organisational models, transnational networks, and the creation of a unique formative culture. It shows how groups such as the Clapham Sect -- including William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton, Hannah More, James Stephen, and others -- emerged in an intergenerational context, and how they sought to effect social and cultural change across multiple spheres. For every headline achievement, there were many failed experiments, inner wrestlings, and long-running intellectual collaborations that left a wide and deep imprint on the cultural and political landscape of the English-speaking world. Drawing on the separate historiographies of metropolitan philanthropy, associational culture, anti-slavery, moral reform, Evangelicalism, colonial missions, and economic thought, the study unites into one analytical frame both the imaginative and organizational realities of philanthropy, offering a dual focus on individual philanthropists -- their inner lives, daily practices, and participation in collaborative communities -- and on mapping the networks that bound philanthropic societies and projects together in metropolitan London and at the far reaches of the British world. In doing so, it offers a very human portrait of these entrepreneurs and evangelicals, as they pursued a philanthropic global vision.

The Britain of 600-800 AD was populated by four distinct peoples; the British, Picts, Irish and Anglo-Saxons. They spoke 3 different languages, Gaelic, Brittonic and Old English, and lived in a diverse cultural environment. In 600 the British and the Irish were already Christians. In contrast the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons and Picts occurred somewhat later, at the end of the 6th and during the 7th century. Religion was one of the ways through which cultural difference was expressed, and the rulers of different areas of Britain dictated the nature of the dominant religion in areas under their control. This book uses the Conversion and the Christianisation of the different peoples of Britainas a framework through which to explore the workings of their political systems and the structures of their society. Because Christianity adapted to and affected the existing religious beliefs and social norms wherever it was introduced, it’s the perfect medium through which to study various aspects of society that are difficult to study by any other means.

Chosen peoples demonstrates how biblical themes, ideas and metaphors shaped racial, national and imperial identities in the long nineteenth century. Even as radical new ideas challenged the historicity of the Bible, biblical notions of lineage, descent and inheritance continued to inform understandings of race, nation and empire. European settler movements portrayed ‘new’ territories across the seas as lands of Canaan, but if many colonised and conquered peoples resisted the imposition of biblical narratives, they also appropriated biblical tropes to their own ends. These innovative case-studies throw new light on familiar areas such as slavery, colonialism and the missionary project, while forging exciting cross-comparisons between race, identity and the politics of biblical translation and interpretation in South Africa, Egypt, Australia, America and Ireland.