5HUM0271 week 10: Religion in an Age of Dissent
Basic definitions:
Dissent/nonconformity - Protestant sects and denominations not part of the
established Churches of England/Wales, Scotland and Ireland [e.g. Baptists,
Congregationalists, Quakers, Presbyterians]
Toleration – Enlightenment and Whig idea of allowing certain rights to
Dissenters.
Penal Laws – restrictions on Catholics on practising their religion, serving in
office and holding land; repealed in part by acts of 1778, 1791 and 1829.
Test and Corporation Acts – prevented Dissenters from serving in office;
repealed in 1828.
‘High Church’ – those in the Church of England who preferred an emphasis
on the sacraments and the liturgy.
Evangelical – those in the Church of England who favoured a missionary style
of worship; emphasis on the scriptures.
evangelicalism – as above, but encompasses Dissenters as well.
Presbyterianism – the denomination of the Church of Scotland after 1690;
organised in assemblies called presbyteries rather than episcopal government
(bishops).
Methodism – section of the Church of England/Wales begun by John Wesley
in the 1740s; split from the Church of England/Wales in the 1810s.
Unitarianism – established from 1774, though not entirely legal until 1813;
denies the doctrine of the Trinity; a form of ‘rational’ Dissent.
Some key individuals:
John Wesley (1703-1791);
Joseph Priestley (1733-1804)
Richard Price (1723-1791);
Hannah More (1745-1833);
Joanna Southcott (1750-1814)
Further reading:
J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1688-1832 (1985)
J. Walsh, C. Haydon and S. Taylor, eds., The Church of England, c.16891833: from Toleration to Tractarianism (1993)
Jeremy Gregory and Jeffrey Scott Chamberlain, eds, The National Church in
Local Perspective (2003)
D. Hempton, Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750-1850 (1984)