Church Life: Pastors, Congregations, and the Experience of Dissent in Seventeenth-Century England

Lynch uses this case study to tease out wider questions of how religious tolerance could be achieved through neighbourliness and community, to 'emphasize the confusions and discontinuities in Dissenting church formation at this time' (p. 65). A more 'vigorous disciplinarian' than...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inBunyan studies no. 24; pp. 131 - 134
Main Author Daniel, Robert W
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2020
Subjects
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

Loading…
More Information
Summary:Lynch uses this case study to tease out wider questions of how religious tolerance could be achieved through neighbourliness and community, to 'emphasize the confusions and discontinuities in Dissenting church formation at this time' (p. 65). A more 'vigorous disciplinarian' than the 'tinker' of Bedford, Ebenezer Chandler steered his flock towards a 'Presbyterian-leaning Congregationalism', introducing church practices 'often resisted by more hard-line Calvinistic churches' - such as infant baptism and the singing of psalms - which ultimately saw church authority being 'concentrated more pointedly in the pastor's hands' (pp. 178, 189, 190). In tracking truancy (sometimes decades long) extant church books record congregants participating in a 'pluralism of worship' between Dissenting chapels and the Church of England, and evince further competing factors of domestic, economic and social responsibilities (p. 209).
ISSN:0954-0970