The Changing Shape of English Nonconformity, 1825-1925

This book addresses several dimensions of the transformation of English Nonconformity over the course of an important century in its history. It begins with the question of education for ministry, considering the activities undertaken by four major evangelical traditions (Congregationalist, Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian) to establish theological colleges for this purpose, and then takes up the complex three-way relationship of ministry/churches/colleges that evolved from these activities. As author Dale Johnson illustrates, this evolution came to have significant implications for the Nonconformist engagement with its message and with the culture at large. These implications are investigated in chapters on the changing perception or understanding of ministry itself, religious authority, theological questions (such as the doctrines of God and the atonement), and religious identity. In Johnson's exploration of these issues, conversations about these topics are located primarily in addresses at denominational meetings, conferences that took up specific questions, and representative religious and theological publications of the day that participated in key debates or advocated contentious positions. While attending to some important denominational differences, The Changing Shape of English Nonconformity, 1825-1925 focuses on the representative discussion of these topics across the whole spectrum of evangelical Nonconformity rather than on specific denominational traditions. Johnson maintains that too many interpretations of nineteenth-century Nonconformity, especially those that deal with aspects of the theological discussion within these traditions, have tended to depict such developments as occasions of decline from earlier phases of evangelical vitality and appeal. This book instead argues that it is more appropriate to assess these Nonconformist developments as a collective, necessary, and deeply serious effort to come to terms with modernity and, further, to retain a responsible understanding of what it meant to be evangelical. It also shows these developments to be part of a larger schema through which Nonconformity assumed a more prominent place in the English culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I. "Factories of Preachers and Pastors": The Nonconformist Engagement with Theological Education 1: Modest Beginnings 2: Evaluation and Reform 3: The Methodist Quest for an Educated Ministry 4: Piety, Education, and Ministry Part II. Ministry and Theology in a New Age: The Nonconformist Engagement with Its Message and with the Culture 5: The Ministry Required by the Age 6: The Shifting Sands of Religious Authority 7: Theology and the Task of Reconstruction 8: Nonconformity and Identity: Beyond the Chilling Mists of Controversy Conclusion

About the Author :
Dale Johnson is Professor of Church History at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University and editor of the quarterly journal Religious Studies Review. His special area of interest is modern religious history, and his previous books include Women in English Religion, 1700-1925 (1983) and Women and Religion in Britain and Ireland: An Annotated Bibliography from the Reformation to 1993 (1995).

Review :
"The colleges give Dale Johnson a base for discussing the changing shape of the ministry in the denominations and that in turn reflects what is happening in the congregations themselves. In the second part, having acquainted his readers with the colleges, he turns to substance and the challenges presented to the colleges and their products, the ministers, by a rapidly evolving Victorian culture and, above all, by developments in science and social concern....The book is written with remarkable objectivity, yet it is wonderfully engaged. The style is beautifully clear and well-paced."--R. K. Webb, University of Maryland, Baltimore County "Overall, Dale Johnson's scholarship is indeed of very high quality. All of his chapters are thoroughly researched and his judgments are sound. He succeeds not only in tracing the evolution of ministerial education, the changing roles of theologians and ministers, and the trends in theology with great skill, but also gives us a segment of the relationship between Nonconformity and the wider society, at least in regard to intellectual life."--Paul T. Phillips, St. Francis Xavier University "This study covers the mainline English Protestant denominations during a lengthy period of cultural modernization and of correlated changes within the denominations. Johnson writes with authority of the evolution of Nonconformist pastoral education and its consequence for conceptions of the ministry and for theological debate at the century's end....The manuscript is clearly conceived, well-written, and convincing both in its use of sources and in its analysis of issues....With it, Albert Outler would be well pleased."--From the award-announcement remarks for the American Society of Church History's 1996 Albert C. Outler Prize "[W]e should be grateful that an author has ventured into the field of Victorian nonconformist theology that has hitherto been far too little explored. This lucidly written work enables us to chart the field much more clearly than in the past."--Anglican And Episcopal History "Dale Johnson's Outler Award-winning book offers an important and well-written look at the way theological education influenced Nonconformist ministry, theological development, and identity during the Victorian era."--Church History "Johnson's analysis of this complex subject is lucid, persuasive, and well documented. He has made a notable and original contribution to the history of English Nonconformity. All of those concerned with the role of academic theologians within the university as well as their importance to the body of believers at large will find this work timely and compelling reading."--The Catholic Historical Review "Richly detailed analysis of a crucial and neglected chapter of Victorian religious history: the educational preparation of the Nonconformist ministry."-- American Historical Review