This is the second volume in the landmark five-volume Oxford History of Anglicanism. Like other volumes in the series, the focus is on the historical development of the Anglican Church, Anglican identity, and the myriad ways in which Anglicanism has shaped, and been shaped by, culture, society, intellectual life and politics. As the title suggests, the scope of this volume encompasses the period between post-Restoration re-establishment of Anglicanism and the dismantling of Anglican privileges in the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. The period has come to be known as the ‘long eighteenth century’ (1688–1832), which saw significant challenges to the ancién regime, the political and social system that had prevailed in many parts of Europe before the French Revolution and which came under increasing challenge after 1789.
The subtitle, Establishment and Empire, alludes to two key developments of this period that were of fundamental importance. As Gregory points out in his introductory essay, other themes such as ‘Enlightenment’ and ‘Evangelicalism’ might also have been stressed, but themes of establishment and empire were more foundational in the sense that the Anglican Church mattered because it was the established church in the empire that was rapidly becoming the world’s largest empire during this period.
A unifying theme of this volume is the vital importance of Anglicanism to the politics, society, and culture of the period, reflecting a strong revisionist turn in Anglican historiography since the mid-century scholarship of Norman Sykes and more recently since the 1980s, notably in the landmark The Church of England, c.1689–c.1833, edited by John Walsh and Stephen Taylor, where scholars highlighted the successes and strengths of the church, rather than just its failures and shortcomings. And had begun to reform long before the restructuring and theological change ushered in by Tractarians after 1830. A key contention of the volume is that the story of the Church is important for more than just understanding religion in this period. Rather, the church was ‘central to political, social, intellectual, and cultural matters’ (p. 3). Moreover, its role in political and society was never stronger than in this period.
Part I is entitled ‘Defining Anglicanism’, with chapters on the Anglican Church that break the longer eighteenth century up into three distinct periods: 1662–1714, 1714–1783 and 1783–1829. In particular, Mark Smith’s chapter on the latter period helpfully shows how the years between 1783 and 1829 were transformative: for constitutional changes; for diversity within thought and practice that was ushered in by the Evangelical Revival; for a rise in voluntarism and overseas expansion that issued in colonial episcopates and missions, and a resurgence of High Church and liberal Anglicanism; and for new adjustments in relation to the British state and its provision of church infrastructure. Bill Jacob considers the English context and its relative health in this period, while also noting, like Smith, the extent to which reforms (e.g. in medieval administrative structures) were needed to face the ‘troubled waters’ after 1830 (p. 119).
Historians of the Anglican Church outside England have in recent years become more sensitive to imperial and transnational contexts. Several chapters pick up imperial and colonial themes, an extension of geographical range that is one of the most important contributions of the volume and which sets it apart from earlier studies such as Owen Chadwick’s monumental Victorian Church, which virtually ignored colonial and imperial developments. Part II focuses on ‘Regional Anglicanisms’, with chapters on Anglicanism in England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, North America, the Caribbean and West Indies, India, Africa, and Australia and New Zealand. Natalie A. Zacek’s chapter on the Caribbean and West Indies in particular helps to address a gap in scholarly attention, not least in considering the place of Anglicanism for elites in those societies, and the long shadow of their relations with slavery. Likewise, Elizabeth Elbourne’s chapter skilfully surveys the complex relationship between the institutional presence of Anglicanism, the slave trade, and colonialism, as well as its role in education and scientific endeavour. Finally, Joe Hardwick’s chapter on the Anglican Church in Australia and New Zealand incorporates recent reassessments of the Church’s role in colonial society, which have seen it as formative to civil society, rather than being merely the tool of a punitive colonial state.
These chapters show how the church both spread Anglican identity and could itself be an instrument of empire-building, helping to forge ties of loyalty and affection between metropole and colony. The Book of Common Prayer helped create what Gregory calls an ‘imagined global Anglican community’ (p. 16). Here Alasdair Raffe’s chapter on Scotland argues suggestively that the Scottish Church’s relationship with the Church of England and its fledgling understanding of an international church adumbrated issues that would be faced by colonial churches. Likewise, James B. Bell’s chapter on North America shows how a colonial episcopal infrastructure emerged there, first in Virginia and Maryland, and later in Nova Scotia and across the Canadian provinces.
Part III examines identities and contains deft chapters that reveal how Anglican identities were moulded by the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, liturgy and worship (Bryan D. Spinks), the ubiquitous and immensely popular sermon (Bill Jacob), and church building and architecture, not least within the Georgian parish church (Louis P. Nelson). In her chapter on the rich mutual interaction between Anglicanism and the visual arts, Clare Haynes observes that Anglicanism’s influence on the visual arts in the long eighteenth century was largely outside the church, a situation that has almost completely reversed by the twenty-first century. In an age in which cathedral choirs and music were restored, and which saw the influence of composers as diverse as Frederic Handel and Charles Wesley, Nicholas Temperley’s chapter stresses the extent to which Anglicans both maintained and broke with tradition. B.W. Young’s chapter on theology usefully incorporates recent insights among intellectual historians on the Enlightenment and its differing geographical and cultural manifestations, especially in places like England, Scotland and North America, where the phenomenon’s congruence with Christian commitment and theological accommodation could be significant (as opposed to, say, France). J.C.D. Clark probes the extent to which a defined ‘Broad Church’ existed before the 1850s (the decade in which Conybeare published his famous essays on church parties), while David Manning shows how identifies could be forged and expanded via the Anglican genius for religious societies, organizations and missions (ch. 22). Gareth Atkins’ chapter on Anglican Evangelicalism, which can be helpfully read alongside David R. Wilson’s chapter on Methodism, offers a lucid account of how the fluid and personality-driven Evangelicalism of the early eighteenth century was by the 1830s well on its way to becoming more of an institution and a party.
The contributors are leading scholars in their respective fields and geographical specializations, and the standard of chapters is consistently high. Students and newcomers to the history of Anglicanism may well find that some chapters assume a little too much prior knowledge of what is admittedly a vast historiography. That said, they will be assisted in many cases by concise overviews of the key contours, personalities, and developments of Anglican history and historiography. At the same time, specialists will benefit from cogent accounts that show the state of current scholarship, suggestions for future research, and, in several cases, new and stimulating interpretations. I highly recommend this volume for any serious student of the long eighteenth century generally, and the Anglican Church specifically.
