Afterword
-
Diarmaid MacCulloch
Abstract
This Afterword resoundingly affirms this volume’s continuing efforts to detach the history of the Church of England from Victorian-era myths about the emergence of an Anglican via media. There is a continual need for historians to keep their confessional identities in check, and to exposit the evidence from the primary sources. A subsidiary theme arising from this volume has been the ‘Established’ rather than national identity of the Church of England following the Restoration Settlement in 1662, with considerable English Reformed Protestants marginalised and given a common label as ‘Dissenters’, and the scope of conformity narrowed. While a Protestant cuckoo in a Catholic nest, the Elizabethan Church exhibited the diversity of this Reformed identity, even as its bishops clung to Zürich or Strasbourg rather than to Geneva for guidance; even its catholic structure of episcopacy was a familial resemblance, to be found in Ireland, Scotland, Poland, Hungary, and Transylvania. What was truly exceptional was the persistence of English cathedrals, and the attempt of some Elizabethans to rearrange their traditional purpose of formalised worship and choral music around a distinctively Reformed ecclesiology centred on preaching. This and many other explorations of Reformed identity and conformity are achieved in this volume, albeit omitting one abundant well of evidence of the dominance of Reformed forms of worship across all sections of English society: the radical alterations of parish churches and chapels throughout the 150-year period before 1688, a process already exposed by antiquarians, yet still to be fully integrated into our historical understanding.
Abstract
This Afterword resoundingly affirms this volume’s continuing efforts to detach the history of the Church of England from Victorian-era myths about the emergence of an Anglican via media. There is a continual need for historians to keep their confessional identities in check, and to exposit the evidence from the primary sources. A subsidiary theme arising from this volume has been the ‘Established’ rather than national identity of the Church of England following the Restoration Settlement in 1662, with considerable English Reformed Protestants marginalised and given a common label as ‘Dissenters’, and the scope of conformity narrowed. While a Protestant cuckoo in a Catholic nest, the Elizabethan Church exhibited the diversity of this Reformed identity, even as its bishops clung to Zürich or Strasbourg rather than to Geneva for guidance; even its catholic structure of episcopacy was a familial resemblance, to be found in Ireland, Scotland, Poland, Hungary, and Transylvania. What was truly exceptional was the persistence of English cathedrals, and the attempt of some Elizabethans to rearrange their traditional purpose of formalised worship and choral music around a distinctively Reformed ecclesiology centred on preaching. This and many other explorations of Reformed identity and conformity are achieved in this volume, albeit omitting one abundant well of evidence of the dominance of Reformed forms of worship across all sections of English society: the radical alterations of parish churches and chapels throughout the 150-year period before 1688, a process already exposed by antiquarians, yet still to be fully integrated into our historical understanding.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Notes on contributors vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- List of abbreviations x
- Introduction 1
- I Ecclesio-political and liturgical contests 19
- 1 Contests, contexts, and the boundaries of conformity in early modern England 21
- 2 Protestant jurisdictionalism and the nature of Elizabethan puritan nonconformity 44
- 3 Cathedrals, the Reformed, and the Elizabethan Church 71
- 4 Sir Francis Hastings, Jacobean nonconformity, and the House of Commons, 1604–10 97
- 5 Zachary Crofton, the Restoration Church of England, and the dilemmas of partial conformity, 1662–65 117
- II Reformed conformist theology and ecclesiology 139
- 6 Justifying faith and faith as a virtue in the theology of Richard Hooker 141
- 7 The best religion? The revived ambitions of the Reformed conformist establishment, 1637–40 157
- 8 The Reformed conformist tradition, 1640–62 179
- 9 Edward Reynolds and the making of a presbyterian bishop 199
- 10 The Reformed theology of Thomas Hobbes 222
- 11 Reformed orthodoxy as conformity in the post-Restoration Church of England 245
- Afterword 263
- Index 271
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Notes on contributors vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- List of abbreviations x
- Introduction 1
- I Ecclesio-political and liturgical contests 19
- 1 Contests, contexts, and the boundaries of conformity in early modern England 21
- 2 Protestant jurisdictionalism and the nature of Elizabethan puritan nonconformity 44
- 3 Cathedrals, the Reformed, and the Elizabethan Church 71
- 4 Sir Francis Hastings, Jacobean nonconformity, and the House of Commons, 1604–10 97
- 5 Zachary Crofton, the Restoration Church of England, and the dilemmas of partial conformity, 1662–65 117
- II Reformed conformist theology and ecclesiology 139
- 6 Justifying faith and faith as a virtue in the theology of Richard Hooker 141
- 7 The best religion? The revived ambitions of the Reformed conformist establishment, 1637–40 157
- 8 The Reformed conformist tradition, 1640–62 179
- 9 Edward Reynolds and the making of a presbyterian bishop 199
- 10 The Reformed theology of Thomas Hobbes 222
- 11 Reformed orthodoxy as conformity in the post-Restoration Church of England 245
- Afterword 263
- Index 271
