Seventeenth century Quakers

Many early modern religious groups were characterized by an intense spirituality that stressed the importance of the work of the divine Spirit in each and every true believer. One of the most visible and powerful signs of such spiritual possession was the experience of falling under the power of God, as expressed by the bodily manifestation of shaking, trembling, and convulsing.

The idea of a physical display of God’s possession became a marker of identity of the first generation of Quakers, of the persecuted Huguenots of the Cevennes, and of some Jansenist groups. However, the idea of the body as a prophetic theater was not alien to many people and groups in early modern times, as evidenced by the case of the Sabbatians. While these intense charismatic phenomena were perceived by those who experienced them as intense manifestations of the divine, their representation was used to vilify, denigrate, and ridicule these religious nonconformists. The theological and philosophical discussions about religious "Enthusiasm" were at the center of the confessional polemics of early modern times.

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.


Introduction

Section I. Missionary Models

1. ‘One World is not enough’: the ‘myth’ of Roman Catholicism as a ‘World Religion’

Simon Ditchfield

2. The Jesuits have shed much blood for Christ’: Early Modern Protestants and the Problem of Catholic Overseas Missions

John Coffey

Section II. The Origins of Global Protestantism

3. (Re)making Ireland British: Conversion and Civility in a Neglected 1643 Treatise

Joan Redmond

4. Charting the ‘Progress of Truth’: Quaker Missions and the Topography of Dissent in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe

Sünne Juterczenka

5. The English and the Italian Bible

Simone Maghenzani

Section III. Missions and Church Unifications in the Age of the Enlightenment

6. "True Catholic Unity": The Church of England and the Project for Gallican Union, 1717-1719

Catherine Arnold

7. "Promoting the Common Interest of Christ" H.W. Ludolf’s ‘impartial’ Projects and the Beginnings of the SPCK

Adelisa Malena

8. Between Anti-popery and European Missions: The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and its Networks

Sugiko Nishikawa

Section IV. A British Missionary Land

9. The Evangelical Transformation of British Protestantism for Mission

David Bebbington

10. The London Jews’ Society and the Roots of Premillenialism, 1809-1829

Brent S. Sirota

11. Missions on the Fringes of Europe: British Protestants and the Orthodox Churches, c. 1800-1850

Gareth Atkins

Section V. Making Propaganda, Making Nations

12. Sermons in Stone: Architecture and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts within the Diocese of Gibraltar, c.1842-1882

G. Alex Bremner

13. The Land of Calvin and Voltaire: British Missionaries in Nineteenth-century Paris

Michael Ledger-Lomas