Global coverage presents the editors of this series, and this volume in particular, with problems of definition, for the language of religious dissent is anchored in a particular historical tradition relating to the exclusive nature of established religion and those persecuted and de-citizened because of this. But equally, in the nineteenth century, migration and mission, an essential part of the identity of the sending Churches, took that tradition all over the world to locations altogether innocent of that history. This problem is well handled by the editors of this volume, who wisely focus on the United Kingdom and North America, but there are limitations. Whilst slavery is identified as crucial to the agendas of British and American Churches, the actual conflict in, for example, Jamaica, with episodes like the partial emancipation of 1833, and Morant Bay and the Governor Eyre affair, lie outside the discussion. The history of the old dissenting denominations is well handled, and interestingly orthodox and heterodox Presbyterian Dissent in all parts of the United Kingdom are treated in the same chapter. New Dissent, that is Methodism, is seen as developing a growing denominational consciousness as its life outside the established Church was confirmed, and then it had to contend with the existence of a number of parallel strands, with even the Wesleyans coming to see themselves as dissenters. The nineteenth century's newer forms of dissent receive significant attention – Plymouth Brethren, the Catholic Apostolic Church and Campbellites, forerunners of the Churches of Christ, many of whom sought a recreation of a primitive ecclesiology whilst others sought an ecclesiology anticipating the eschaton.
Migrant Churches in North America reveal the complexity of exported dissent, for some Scottish migrants in the Presbyterian tradition had an established church background whilst others bravely professed their nonconformist heritage. Some New England Congregationalists, even though migrating for reasons of persecution, set up virtual establishments in the colonies which they were loathe to abandon until swept up into the all-pervasive influence of a successful religious and societal voluntaryism, in part the fruit of the Second Great Awakening, which, it is noted, saw the populist upsurge of revivalist Baptists and Methodists displacing the once culturally and numerically dominant Congregationalists and Presbyterians. To historic divisions over polity and theology, the issue of slavery added new ethical lines of division, with northern Congregationalists acquiring fame for their vigorous opposition to slavery, which found sturdy defenders amongst southern Presbyterians.
The emergence of Methodism as a separate denomination both in the Americas and in the UK witnessed conspicuous growth so that by 1859 Methodists, championing the religion of ordinary folk in a non-elitist USA, constituted one third of American church membership. But in a more settled society a more respectable Methodism suffered internal dissent as issues such as institutional control, and race and slavery, caused rifts within the body. On the other hand this allowed Methodism to benefit from the ‘remarkable explosion of black evangelism’ after the Civil War, a period which also saw American Methodism spawn the Holiness Movement which at the end of the century laid the foundations for the rise of Pentecostalism. Like the Methodists Baptists experienced extraordinary growth in non-elitist parts of American society; like them too they suffered the withdrawal of black members to form their own conventions, whilst the Civil War saw the denomination split North v. South, suffering further division from the rise of Landmarkism, the belief that Baptists possessed a unique legitimacy as being in direct succession of believer-baptising Churches dating back to the apostolic community. At the opposite extreme, Walter Rauschenbusch, whose father was a convert from German Lutheranism, taught his fellow Baptists to appreciate the social gospel.
The consideration of Unitarianism is mainly concerned with Unitarian dominance of the theology chairs at Harvard with no indication of national strength and little concern for Unitarian life and influence outside academe, though subsequent chapters underline their contribution to social and political reform The three pages devoted to the Shakers may be fair but to deal with the Quakers at the same length seems less defensible. By contrast the Stone Campbell Restoration movement is explored at some length, in particular carefully tracing the former ecclesiastical loyalties of its leaders.
In Australia Presbyterians and Methodists were willing to avail themselves of state aid whereas the vast majority of Congregationalists and Baptists refused such help. In the Pacific indigenous Christians more often conceptualised the principles of Dissent in being against missionary and colonial control rather than in hostility to state intervention in matters of religion. Dissent played its part in creating the Bible civilisation of the nineteenth century whether through private devotion, family prayers or the exposition of Scripture in the pulpit. Whilst the Dissenting Academies and their successors made a distinguished contribution to theological scholarship, it was questioned whether ministerial training was about equipping preachers rather than producing scholars Moreover, even the heterodox claimed biblical authority for their rejection of Trinitarian beliefs, whilst both sides in the slavery debate could invoke Scripture. By the end of the century however the rise of bíblical criticism provoking debates about inerrancy and inspiration made the biblical mandate less universally persuasive in dissenting life.
The impact of the Enlightenment on Dissenting thinking is clearly affirmed as is the moderating influence of Jonathan Edwards on received Calvinist orthodoxy, making for a more outward looking evangelistic theology, which continued to bear fruit when Romanticism supplanted the Enlightenment as the prevailing secular cultural influence. Such themes were not confined to the study, as the chapter on preaching makes clear, whilst the chapter on evangelism and mission, whether at home or abroad, demonstrates how the new life of the second evangelical awakening on both sides of the Atlantic made its impact across the traditional Calvinist/Arminian divide, urging dissenters into relieving social as well as spiritual deprivation. As the dimensions of these problems more and more required state intervention, so actions were taken which later would justify the much cited comment that the Labour Party in Britain owed more to Nonconformity than to Marxism.
In all this the life of the local gathered congregation, living in covenant relationship with God and their fellow believers, all sharing a conversion experience, was crucial, and underpinning it the life of the devout Christian family, with both a proper recognition of women's gifts (leading eventually to office-holding and the possibility of ordination) and a refinement of the vocation of the Christian man.
