According to the standard narrative, although John Henry Newman was driven away from Oxford in the 1840s by the dominant Protestant consensus, by the end of his life in the 1890s he was back in favour, fêted in Oxford as a Roman Catholic celebrity and as an esteemed alumnus. This article challenges that interpretation by examining the forgotten controversy over Newman's national monument, a significant aspect of his reception history. It shows how Newman's memory and reputation remained hotly contested, provoking resistance by the dons and citizens of late Victorian Oxford, even in this recently secularised and professedly tolerant university city.

This article uses the history of Jewish-Christian relations in twentieth-century Britain to shed light on the theological and political changes which have shaped inter-faith dialogue, and explore religious responses to the perceived acceleration of secularism. In so doing it questions the centrality of antisemitism and the Holocaust as the key drivers of change in Jewish-Christian relations and highlights the importance of broader shifts in religious belief, and a growing perception of ‘common ground’ between faiths. While Jewish-Christian relations in Britain are now frequently presented as a model of inter-faith cooperation, this article argues that longstanding theological and political challenges have continued to problematise this role-model status.

Between about 1850 and 1940 the Dutch Protestant missionary movement reached its ascendancy and set out to establish the kingdom of God in overseas territories. In doing so, mission became inextricably linked with Dutch imperialism. This article investigates this connection through the lens of cartography. Missionary maps of the world in general and the colonies in particular were produced and distributed in schools and churches to inform a Dutch audience about mission and to gather support. This article concludes that mission and imperialism were different strands that became increasing entangled towards the end of the nineteenth century.

A challenge has recently been made to the venerable tradition that the passage of Henry VIII's first act for suppressing monasteries (1536) was facilitated by the presentation in parliament of details of monastic sexual misconduct gathered during the royal visitation of the monasteries in 1535–6. This article, by following up clues missed in the evidence cited for that challenge, precisely identifies a now lost source, last sighted in the hands of John Bale, which casts important new light on the visitation and, it is argued, was very probably the exact document presented to parliament in 1536.

As a relatively open academic atmosphere related to religious studies in general became manifest in the People's Republic of China in the early 1990s, new possibilities for studies of various forms of Christianity in greater China (the mainland and Chinese communities outside of the PRC) began to be realised both within China and overseas. Within the first decade of the twenty-first century, two major handbooks related to the study of Christianity in China were produced under the editorships of the Belgian Jesuit scholar, Nicolas Standaert (1959–)1 and the German Protestant scholar, R. G. Tiedemann (1941–2019),2 initiating what should be considered to be the most up-to-date and essentially new standard reference works regarding the study of all forms of Christianity that have had interactions with various Chinese persons over the period of time from the beginning of the Tang dynasty (seventh century) to the year 2000. Both volumes were large by any standard, the former being nearly a thousand pages in length, and the latter extending beyond a thousand pages. Both produced a state-of-the-art account of their particular historical coverage of varying forms of Christianity that came to or emerged within China during those periods. Notably, most of the supporting authors who contributed to those two massive volumes were foreign scholars of the history of Christianity in China and Chinese Christianity.3

This paper describes and analyses the remuneration arrangements of Church of Scotland ministers serving rural parishes between 1815 and 1974. It constructs and deploys a new longitudinal and cross-sectional dataset, materially more extensive in range and scope than those previously developed, calibrating the absolute and relative level of stipend throughout the period. It offers a preliminary analysis of the economic consequences for ministers and the established Church of the process of fixing, or standardising, stipends in money terms from 1925 onwards, highlighting how this undermined the financial foundations of the Church's principal means of stipendiary funding.

Preserved among the so-called ‘Armagh registers’ is an act book of the consistory and metropolitan court of Armagh that was compiled in the early sixteenth century. Its fortuitous survival facilitates a systematic study of how an Irish church court processed litigation concerning women's marriages or other sexual relationships, and their sexual reputations, and in doing so reveals a great deal about important aspects of the lives of women in early Tudor Ireland.

The nomination of Hensley Henson as bishop of Hereford in 1917 provoked a famous ecclesiastical controversy, the ‘Hereford scandal’, which threatened a split within the Church of England and a crisis between the Church and the State. The point of contention has always been understood to have been doctrinal, but this article argues that this was largely a proxy for disputes over Church policies, and that the outcome had significant consequences for the continuing character of the national Church. It also explains how the Hereford episode both stimulated and arrested demands for reform in the prime ministerial nomination of bishops.

While a great number of manuscripts of Augustine's De haeresibus add to the text chapters on the Christological heresies that arose after Augustine's death, modern editions offer only a confused picture of their transmission. This article identifies three distinct sets of additional chapters, and analyses their sources, possible origins and theological implications. It demonstrates that their authors were taking distinct positions in the debate over neo-Chalcedonianism, the interpretation of Chalcedonian Christology that started to became dominant in the early sixth century. The additions also provide evidence that many neo-Chalcedonians saw an Augustinian understanding of grace as complementary to their Christology.

This article demonstrates how transnational encounters and exchanges can shape and re-shape Christian beliefs and practices in a globalising world. It does this using the example of a transnational network of neo-charismatic churches called Newfrontiers that was founded in the small towns of Sussex during the 1970s but, by 2011, encompassed almost 850 churches in over sixty countries. Drawing on extensive primary research, this article shows how the theological and practical commitment of Newfrontiers churches to racial reconciliation and the building of diverse congregations was forged over thirty years through encounters between British, South African and Ghanaian Christians.

Arguably the most interesting source for the religious views of the early English evangelical Thomas Bilney (1495–1531) are the annotations in his copy of the Vulgate. Unfortunately, scholars have accessed these annotations almost exclusively through the error-riddled and selective summary provided in 1940 by J. Y. Batley. This study corrects Batley's most significant errors and provides transcriptions and translations of the most interesting annotations that he omitted. These include discussions of clerical celibacy, whether God is the author of evil, which biblical texts are authentically canonical and the nature of the law, justification and salvation.

Liberius of Rome is often portrayed as Athanasius’ strongest ally in the Latin West. His support for Athanasius is said to have begun by the end of his first year in office, when a synod in Rome accepted an Egyptian council's vindication of Athanasius against an Eastern council's excommunication. This article argues that the Roman synod did not ratify the Egyptian council's decisions but rather called for an appeals trial. In so doing Liberius did not defend Athanasius but preserved what he saw as the traditional duties and authority of the Roman see in matters of ecclesiastical discipline.

Violence is a crucial lens for inquiring historically into Christianity worldwide. The field of World Christianity, however, has been oriented by a paradigm of growth, success and Christian converts’ creative agency. This article establishes the need for a historiographical intervention in the literature on World Christianity through a critical analysis of texts that have formed the field, followed by examinations of anti-Evangelical violence in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Mexico, and Catholic-Protestant conflicts in colonial East Africa. These case studies identify lacunae in the field and suggest that violence has often been a constitutive part of the contextual formation of World Christianity.

This article analyses the Ecos sagrados de la fama gloriosa de Innocencio xi, an elaborate panegyric by the Spanish priest and musician Gaspar Sanz written in 1681 in praise of the reigning pope. The Ecos sagrados is built around the concept of an echo poem, which in turn inspires seven prose discourses that reflect on aspects of the pope's name and character. However, the text is also a unique resource for tracing transmission of ideas through the Spanish Church and for encountering a forgotten world of intellectual diversion amongst the priests of Baroque Madrid.

The Franciscan doctrine of absolute poverty became one of the most controversial matters under discussion in the 1320s. Even after John XXII's poverty decrees, it did not cease attracting the attention of prominent theorists. This article examines the so-far neglected contribution by the key theologian of the Avignon court and future pope, Jacques Fournier (c.1285–1342). His monumental Matthew commentary contains a lengthy discussion of evangelical poverty. Comparing this text with various counsels drafted for the pope, this article brings to light Fournier's stance on poverty, placing it within the debates held at Avignon during the conflict between John XXII and Ludwig the Bavarian.

The article focuses on a little-known expression of Orthodox conciliar practice in the Russian Empire, the Riga diocesan congress of 1905, and analyses the extent to which commitment to church renewal was spread in regions and provinces of the empire. The article draws attention to the self-presentation of this assembly as a true council, an embodiment of sobornost’. The article interprets the bold reforms proposed by the congress as a product of nineteenth-century ecclesiological ideas, the active participation of the native clergy and laity and the borderland position of Baltic Orthodoxy, a minority faith in a Lutheran region.

This article brings fresh perspective to the Archbishops’ Committee on Church and State that sat from 1913 to 1916, emphasising the divisions in the Church that it both reflected and reinforced. The article focuses on the shadow that two competing legacies cast over the committee's appointment and recommendations, and the reception of its report. This is evident in the work of two prominent figures of the early twentieth-century Church: Herbert Hensley Henson (1863–1947) and J. N. Figgis (1866–1919). While Henson appealed to Hooker's legacy in upholding a national Church, Figgis drew on Tractarianism in defending a narrower, denominational ideal.

In the early 1610s, some Italian Lutheran propaganda came to the attention of the Holy Office. Such propaganda is an anomaly for the period, and questions the current scholarship on the topic. Via the bibliographic study of pamphlets previously neglected or unknown, this article investigates this activity, mostly attributing it to Antonio degli Albizzi (1547–1627), sometime secretary to the Cardinal of Austria. This curious case elucidates the longevity of interest in Lutheranism in the Italian peninsula, and, even if in the mind of just one man, the belief that seventeenth-century Italians could still turn to Protestantism.

The Reformed Church was the official denomination at the Dutch Cape of Good Hope. Lutheran immigrants constituted the second largest Protestant group, and received recognition in 1780. This article argues that Cape Lutherans had an ambiguous relationship with their Church. They oscillated between the two denominations, guided by personal preferences, but also due to restrictions imposed on Lutherans by the Reformed authorities. The prolonged inability to secure recognition prompted the Cape Lutherans to seek support among coreligionists in the German lands, India and elsewhere in the Dutch Empire. This network challenged, but did not overcome, their restricted social and religious position in Cape society.

Hobbes's eschatology in Leviathan is one of the most striking aspects of this classic work and has received considerable scholarly attention. Nevertheless, its scriptural interpretation has rarely been examined. This article closely analyses Hobbes's scriptural case for two aspects of eschatology: the doctrine of mortalism and the terrestrial kingdom of God. It shows that, to a large extent, Hobbes's biblical exegesis for these two eschatological issues was preceded by that of his contemporaries, including Richard Overton and John Archer. It is likely, in particular, that the scriptural interpretation for Hobbes's mortalism was directly indebted to Overton's Mans mortalitie.