In late Victorian and Edwardian England, says Steven Maughan, foreign missions had a broad resonance and significance not adequately explored by historians of English culture. Mighty England Do Good fills that lacuna by examining the rapid growth of foreign missions in the Church of England between 1850 and 1915, culminating at the height of the missionary enterprise in Britain. Maughan's book bridges the gaps between religious, cultural, and imperial history to give a full picture of the movement's importance. Maughan explores Anglicanism as a microcosm of the larger religious culture of Britain, particularly in light of the expanding British empire. This book provides a multidimensional reassessment of the power that foreign missions had to shape belief, institutions, culture, and practice not only within the Church of England but also in the broader culture of the time.

European settlers in Canada, Australia and South Africa said they were building ‘better Britains’ overseas. But their new societies were frequently threatened by devastating wars, rebellions, epidemics and natural disasters. It is striking that settlers turned to old traditions of collective prayer and worship to make sense of these calamities. At times of trauma, colonial governments set aside whole days for prayer so that entire populations could join together to implore God’s intervention, assistance or guidance. And at moments of celebration, such as the coming of peace, everyone in the empire might participate in synchronized acts of thanksgiving. Prayer, providence and empire asks why occasions with origins in the sixteenth century became numerous in the democratic, pluralistic and secularised conditions of the ‘British world’.

This book revisits South Indian Christian communities that were studied in 1959 and written about in Village Christians and Hindu Culture (1968). In 1959 the future of these village congregations was uncertain. Would they grow through conversions or slowly dissolve into the larger Hindu society around them? John Carman and Chilkuri Vasantha Rao s carefully gathered research fifty years later reveals both the decline of many older congregations and the surprising emergence of new Pentecostal and Baptist churches that emphasize the healing power of Christ. Significantly, the new congregations largely cut across caste lines, including both high castes and outcastes (Dalits). Carman and Vasantha Rao pay particular attention to the social, political, and religious environment of these Indian village Christians, including their adaptation of indigenous Hindu practices into their Christian faith and observances.

Alan Stibbs (1901-1971) exercised an influential ministry as a Bible expositor and cogent teacher of Christian doctrine. In this volume eighteen of Stibbs' best and most enduring shorter writings are brought together.