Introduction: Showing Dissenting Hands

• Published in: Bunyan studies Vol. 20; no. 20; pp. 7 - 13
• Main Authors: Davies, Michael, Dunan-Page, Anne, Halcomb, Joel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2016; The International John Bunyan Society
• Series: Dissenting Hands
• Subjects: American Indians; Archives & records; Bendroth, Margaret; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Essays; Hands; History; Humanities and Social Sciences; Library collections; Literary devices; Literature; Meetings; Religions; Religious congregations; Religious organizations; Religious persecution; Researchers; Spirituality; United Kingdom > UK; England; Ireland; Church books; Dissenters; Baptist Churches; Congregationalists; Seventeenth Century England; John Bunyan; Nonconformity
• ISSN: 0954-0970

For what these records offer, uniquely, is an intimate insight into the lives of their individual congregations: how they first embodied and were subsequently organised; the pastoral actions and disciplinary decisions that they undertook; the disputes that they were forced to settle, within and without the church; and the hardships that they faced as godly communities, ranging from harvest-damaging weather to outright schism and, of course, religious persecution. Margaret Bendroth reveals the rationale behind this project, a programme of the Congregational Library & Archives in Boston, while James Cooper unravels the richness of the manuscripts in terms of their diversity and importance not only for our understanding of church government and the nature of congregationalism but also for their power to unearth 'the voices of women, and African and Native Americans' in relation to Puritan spirituality. The essays in this special issue, then, following the spirit of this particular conference, consider the methodological challenges and possibilities of using such sources to understand how the Dissenting experience was documented and communicated, and to assess too their value in terms of the literary history of Dissent and the writing of its collective past. An enormously extensive range of records relating to the life and history of early Dissenting meetings has survived - from minute books (containing church covenants, confessions of faith, and letters), to financial accounts, church histories, and registers of members - providing an unparalleled view into the daily lives and collective experiences of ordinary Dissenting men and women.