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Dissenting Thought and the Life of the Churches Studies in an English Tradition

Author: 
Year:
Pages:732
ISBN:0-7734-9931-8
978-0-7734-9931-7
Price:$379.95
Reveals the diversity of English Dissenting thought. Some essays treat such themes of perennial importance to Dissenters as the nature of the Church and the relations between Church and state. Others show how, in the eighteenth century, doctrinal changes prompted by the Enlightenment influenced church life on the ground. The essays concerning the nineteenth century reveal the varied responses of prominent Dissenters to the shift of theological landmarks associated with the rise of modern biblical criticism and evolutionary thought. Finally, there are essays which demonstrate the continuing relevance of Dissenting thought to current ecumenical debate. Will be of interest to Dissenters, students of Christian thought, and ecumenists.

Reviews

"The strength of this volume is that it contains sketches of little-known Dissenters, as well as descriptions of several congregations, to illustrate the structure and development of Dissenting thought. . . . These studies succeed very well . . . in flushing out the too-often abstract knowledge that we have of Protestant dissent. . . . The Edwin Mellen Press is to be thanked for bring out a book that will serve as a useful work of reference for theologians and historians who desire to learn more about the actual figures who peopled the world of English Dissent." -- Calvin Theological Journal

"The twenty-two offerings here gathered are all worth reading and should be received with gratitude by eighteenth-century buffs, not just because the bulk of them concern their period, nor even because they are retrieved from journals on the whole difficult of access, but because they make a coherent volume, with the author supplying the coherence." -- British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies

"Dr. Alan Sell . . . appears to be one of those remarkable contemporary Christian scholars who are endowed with the astonishing ability to produce a steady stream of substantial and impressive academic books. . . . Dissenting Thought and the Life of the Churches contains an enormous amount of extraordinarily interesting material. . . . It ranges over a vast field and a wide variety of topics, and the author's researches have uncovered some extremely fascinating information, much of it from unexplored territory. . . . The book is full of many similarly delightful quotations, some which provide much food for thought, and it is undoubtedly a goldmine of information about many aspects of English Dissent." - Faith and Freedom

"The author is one of the stars in the firmament of Dissenting scholars today. . . . This is a book one may read or browse through with a pleasure which increases with use. Each chapter introduces the reader to a personality or period or a school of thoug