Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T10:35:19.809Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Interpreting Seventeenth-Century English Religion as Movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

C. John Sommerville
C. John Sommerville
Affiliation:
C. John Sommerville is a professor of history at the University of Florida
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A number of historians have indicated, perhaps unconsciously, that the concept of religious movement would be useful in reference to seventeenth-century English religious history. But while some have used the term “movement” in describing some religious initiatives, no one has explored the implications of that concept for understanding either religious life or the England of that day. Rather, we continue to force things into the terms of “church” and “sect,” with apologies for a loose fit. And yet a disestablished Catholicism, as well as Puritanism, Quakerism, and an emerging ideological “Anglicanism,” are transformed when understood as movements.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 69 , Issue 4 , December 2000 , pp. 749 - 769
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Troeltsch, Ernst, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. Wyon, Olive (New York: Harper, 1960; orig. 1911), l:43f.; 2:696, 700.Google Scholar

2. Beckford, James A., “Explaining Religious Movements,” International Social Science Journal 29 (1977): 236.Google Scholar

3. McAdam, Doug, McCarthy, John D., Zald, Mayer N., “Social Movements,” in Handbook of Sociology, ed. Smelser, Neil J. (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1988), 697–99.Google Scholar

4. Robertson, Roland, “Religious Movements and Modern Societies: Toward a Progressive Problemshift,” Sociological Analysis 40 (1979): 304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Johnson, Benton, “On Church and Sect,” American Sociological Review 28 (1963): 539–49, reducedthat to the following: “A church is a religious group that accepts the social environment in which it exists. A sect is a religious group that rejects the social environment in which it exists.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Robertson, , “Religious Movements and Modern Societies,” 302.Google Scholar

7. Wilson, John, Introduction to Social Movements (New York: Basic, 1973), 8, defines a movement as “a conscious, collective, organized attempt to bring about or resist large-scale change in the social order by noninstitutionalized means.”Google Scholar

8. Bainbridge, William Sims, The Sociology of Religious Movements (New York: Routledge, 1997), 3.Google Scholar

9. Wilson, , Introduction to Social Movements, 9. “Institutions” may be defined as offices or ideas thatare generally accepted, honored, and perhaps enforced in a society.Google Scholar

10. See also the definition of religious movement in Stark, Rodney and Bainbridge, William Sims, “Of Churches, Sects, and Cults: Preliminary Concepts for a Theory of Religious Movements,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 18 (1979): 124f.: “religious movements are social movements that wish to cause or prevent change in a system of beliefs, values, symbols, and practices concerned with providing supernaturallybased general compensators.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Bainbridge, , Sociology of Religious Movements, 395, says that movements exist to frustrate secularization theorists.Google Scholar

12. Wuthnow, Robert, “World Order and Religious Movements,” in New Religious Movements: A Perspective for Understanding Society, ed. Barker, Eileen (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1982), 48f.Google Scholar

13. Wilson, , Introduction to Social Movements, 35,53–55.Google Scholar

14. Wilson, , Introduction to Social Movements, 4.Google ScholarHeberle, Rudolf, “Social Movements,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. Sills, David L. (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 14:440, also thought that social movements implied that society had lost its sacred aura, allowing abstract theories of history or Utopian principles to guide in social reconstruction.Google Scholar

15. Glock, Charles Y., “The Role of Deprivation in the Origin and Evolution of Religious Groups,” in Religion and Social Conflict, eds. Lee, Robert and Marty, Martin E. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 24–36.Google Scholar

16. Sommerville, C. John, The Secularization of Early Modern England: From Religious Culture to Religious Faith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

17. Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967);Google ScholarUsher, Roland G., The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London: Royal Historical Society, 1905). Usher chose the term carefully, to mean “a movement inside the Church to stay in it, or at most to modify its government” (xxiv). But he thought it was too unorganized to survive its founders, which Collinson disputes.Google Scholar

18. Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 11–14.Google Scholar

19. Collinson, , The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 14.Google Scholar

20. Collinson, , The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 134–42.Google Scholar

21. Collinson, , The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 145,210–15.Google Scholar

22. Collinson, , The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 238,303–6,339–42.Google Scholar

23. McGrath, Patrick, Papists and Puritans Under Elizabeth I (London: Blandford, 1967), 241. In later works Collinson explored other religious categories such as Protestant nationalism, cultural revolution, popular religion, and voluntary religion, but did not return to an analysis of movements.Google ScholarSee Collinson, Patrick, The Religion of Protestants (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982)Google Scholarand The Birthpangs of Protestant England (New York: St. Martin's, 1988).Google Scholar

24. Sommerville, C. John, The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia, 1992),21f.Google Scholar

25. See especially Hill, Christopher, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (New York: Schocken, 1967).Google Scholar

26. Hill, Christopher, Economic Problems of the Church (London: Panther, 1971 [1956]), 263.Google Scholar

27. Webster, Tom, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movement, c. 1620–1643 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. Webster, , Godly Clergy, 4f., 338.Google Scholar

29. Haller, William, The Rise of Puritanism (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957 [1938]), 10, 15,25,260.Google Scholar

30. Sommerville, , Discovery of Childhood, 23–28,92–106.Google Scholar

31. McGrath, , Papists and Puritans, 62,120,170,187.Google Scholar

32. Bossy, John, “The Character of Elizabethan Catholicism,” Past and Present 21 (1962): 39–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. Havran, Martin J., The Catholics in Caroline England (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1962), 37–44,62.Google Scholar

34. Havran, , Catholics in Caroline England, 134–47,151–58.Google Scholar

35. Hill, Christopher, The World Turned Upside Down (New York: Viking, 1972), 91,97, 1O1f.Google Scholar

36. Reay, Barry, The Quakers and the English Revolution (New York: St. Martin's, 1985), 11.Google Scholar

37. Hill, , World Turned Upside Down, 301.Google Scholar

38. Hill, , World Turned Upside Down, 200–6,301.Google Scholar

39. Vann, Richard T., The Social Development of English Quakerism, 1655–1755 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1969), 197–206.CrossRefGoogle ScholarOn birthright membership, see also Frost, J. William, The Quaker Family in Colonial America: A Portrait of the Society of Friends (New York: St. Martin's, 1973), 68.Google Scholar

40. Vann, Richard T., “Nurture and Conversion in the Early Quaker Family,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 31 (1969): 639–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. Reay, , Quakers and the English Revolution, passim.Google Scholar

42. Underdown, David, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660 (New York: Oxford University, 1985), 239–70.Google Scholar

43. Sommerville, , Secularization of Early Modern England, 126,170.Google Scholar

44. See Spurr, John, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven: Yale University, 1991), xvi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. Sommerville, , Secularization of Early Modern England, 171–74.Google Scholar

46. Sommerville, C. John, Popular Religion in Restoration England (Gainesville, Fla.: University Presses of Florida, 1977), 36–40,43f., 49f., 55f., 129,141f.Google Scholar

47. Spurr, , Restoration Church, 10, 26;Google ScholarPacker, John W., The Transformation of Anglicanism, 1643–1660 (Manchester: Manchester University, 1969), passim.Google Scholar

48. Whiston, William, quoted in Packer, Transformation of Anglicanism, 27.Google Scholar

49. Bahlman, Dudley W. R., The Moral Revolution of 1688 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University, 1957);Google ScholarBullock, F. W. B., Voluntary Religious Societies, 1520–1799 (St. Leonards on Sea, U.K.: Budd and Gillatt, 1963), 123–236. Bullock puzzled over how to Ht the reforming societies into Troeltsch's typology and concluded that they represent another type, an “inner circle, seeking to leaven the whole lump” (255).Google Scholar

50. More, Paul Elmer and Cross, Frank Leslie, Anglicanism (London: SPCK, 1962), lix.Google Scholar

51. Sommerville, C. John, The News Revolution in England: Cultural Dynamics of Daily Information (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 139–43.Google Scholar

52. Bullock, , Voluntary Religious Societies, 159, 234;Google ScholarSommerville, , Discovery of Childhood, 145–54.Google Scholar

53. Quoted in Gill, Frederick C., The Romantic Movement and Methodism (London: Epworth, 1937), 16.Google Scholar

54. Semmel, Bernard, The Methodist Revolution (New York: Basic, 1973), 20f., 168f., 185–89.Google Scholar

55. Miller, John, Popery and Politics in England, 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 6, 26,114–17,197. More on this mission will soon be forthcoming from Lisa Clark Diller of the University of Chicago.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56. Miller, , Popery and Politics, 197–202.Google ScholarJones, J. R., The Revolution of 1688 in England (New York: Norton, 1972), 82, emphasizes that James only hoped for more eventual success.Google Scholar

57. Miller, , Popery and Politics, 223–25,239–48.Google Scholar

58. Hadden, Jeffrey K., “Religious Movements,” in Encyclopedia of Sociology, eds. Borgatta, Edgar F. and Borgatta, Marie L. (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 3:1642–46.Google Scholar

59. Talmon, Yonina, “Millenarianism,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 10: 349–60.Google Scholar

60. Wuthnow, , “World Order and Religious Movements,” 47–65, lists revitalization, reformation, religious militancy, counterreform, accommodation, millenarian, revivalistic, and nativistic among his categories.Google ScholarHe took the umbrella of “revitalization movements” from Wallace, Anthony F. C., “Revitalization Movements,” American Anthorpologist 58 (1956): 264–81, who used it to refer to a wide variety of “deliberate, organized, conscious efforts by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61. Wilson, , Introduction of Social Movements, 359. This last page of Wilson's book is the only one devoted to movement failure or success.Google Scholar