Introduction and Conference Report: Writing Religious Conflict and Community in the Southwest, 1500–1800

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 27; pp. 3 - 11
• Main Authors: Allsopp, Niall, Parry, David, Schwyzer, Philip
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2023
• Subjects: 17th century; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Case studies; Christianity; Community; Jewish life & ethics; Narratives; Pitts, Joseph R; Protestant Reformation; Religion; Religious congregations; Religious conversion; Religious identity; Writing; United Kingdom > UK; Wales
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Notwithstanding this local opposition, Bond nevertheless proclaimed a bold vision of Exeter and the southwest as central to the godly cause: 'Hath the Lord placed this City in the midst of our County, as a Beacon upon an hill, yea, as the Center, heart and head of the Wesť) In the spirit of Bond's 'Beacon upon an hili', our Leverhulme Trust-funded project Writing Religious Conflict and Community in Exeter, 1500-1750 (ReConEx) has taken Exeter and the southwest of England as an exemplary case study of how early modern writers articulated religious identity within local communities. Tracts in the so-called Ottolenghe controversy (in which conversion to Christianity triggered legal and familial conflicts) rocked the local Jewish community in the 1730s,3 while an Exonian, Joseph Pitts, was the first recorded English Muslim to make the pilgrimage to Mecca in the 1680s.4 This centre of literary activity may have formed, as John Bond claimed, a 'Beacon upon an hili', but this should not imply that it was isolated or exceptional. More recent research, with Devon and the southwest playing a starring role, has revealed intense and often fraught engagement with national issues through energetic grassroots mobilization.10 The local parish provided a key node through which ordinary people encountered the state and negotiated their relationship with it, both political and spiritual.11 Puritans and Nonconformists moved beyond the established parochial structure - both voluntarily and by compulsion - resulting in imaginative experiments with local political organization and religious community-formation.12 There are rich opportunities here for literary studies to examine how these impulses were imagined and articulated at a local level by a diverse range of writers. Paul Auchterlonie considered Devon and Exeter readers' access to information about Islam in the early modern period, particularly focusing on Joseph Pitts's A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohametans (1704/1731).