The Church of England in the 18th century is seen as failing its congregation in the industrialising areas; specific issues are set out. Was the Church of England an ailing or a healthy institution in the eighteenth century? Responding to the slings and arrows of its Victorian critics, ever since the publication in the 1930s of Norman Sykes' Church and State inEngland in the Eighteenth Century, modern scholarship has tended to stress the competence of the Church's leadership at a national and diocesan level and its importance and popularity for the nation at large. Moreover, in recent years, several studies have emerged which argue a strong case for the multi-faceted appeal of the Church of England at the local level. However, although this revisionist scholarship helps to underline the importance of religion for eighteenth-century English society, it fails to account for the haemorrhaging of support which the Church of England experienced in the first half of the nineteenth century. With reference to the situation in England's largest parish, this new study of the Church of England's fortunes in the eighteenth century demonstrates its long-term failure to retain the loyalty and affections of many men and women in the country's industrialising areas. In drawing attention to hitherto neglected issues such as the situation of the Church of England's non-graduate clergy and the failure of its ecclesiastical courts, it presents a post-revisionist case which challenges the existing academic consensus on the situation and success of this faltering institution. Dr M.F. SNAPE teaches in the Department of Theology at the University of Birmingham

A detailed survey of the Anglican mission to the coalfields in an era where rapid industrialisation crucially affected the old ecclesiastical structures. In 1860 the Diocese of Durham launched a new mission to bring Christianity - and specifically Anglicanism - to the teeming population of the Durham coalfield. Over the preceding fifty years the Church of England had become increasingly marginalised as the coalfield population soared. Parish churches that had been built to serve a scattered, rural medieval population were no longer sufficiently close - or relevant - to the new industrial townships that werebeing constructed around the coalmines. The post-1860 mission was a belated attempt to reach out to the new coalfield population, and to rescue them from the forces of Methodism, labour militancy and irreligion. It was posited onthe need to build new churches, to delineate new parishes and to recruit a new type of clergyman: working-class and down-to-earth in origin and outlook, and somebody who could make an empathetic connection with his new parishioners. This book is a detailed exploration of the way in which the Church of England in Durham handled its mission. It follows the Church's relationship with the coalfield, which ranged from an early-nineteenth-century aloofness to an early-twentieth-century identification which many church leaders considered had gone too far, and in so doing reveals how the Durham experience relates to national attempts to maintain Anglicanism's relevance and presence in an increasingly secular and sceptical society. Dr ROBERT LEE lectures in History at the University of Teesside, Middlesbrough.

New scrutinies of the most important political and religious debates of the post-Reformation period. The consequences of the Reformation and the church/state polity it created have always been an area of important scholarly debate. The essays in this volume, by many of the leading scholars of the period, revisit many of the important issues during the period from the Henrician Reformation to the Glorious Revolution: theology, political structures, the relationship of theology and secular ideologies, and the Civil War. Topics include Puritan networks and nomenclature in England and in the New World; examinations of the changing theology of the Church in the century after the Reformation; the evolving relationship of art and protestantism; the providentialist thinking of Charles I;the operation of the penal laws against Catholics; and protestantism in the localities of Yorkshire and Norwich. KENNETH FINCHAM is Reader in History at the University of Kent; Professor PETER LAKE teaches in the Department of History at Princeton University. Contributors: THOMAS COGSWELL, RICHARD CUST, PATRICK COLLINSON, THOMAS FREEMAN, PETER LAKE, SUSAN HARDMAN MOORE, DIARMAID MACCULLOCH, ANTHONY MILTON, PAUL SEAVER, WILLIAM SHEILS

W. M. Jacob examines the concept of 'profession' during the later Stuart and Georgian period, with special reference to the clergy of the Church of England. He describes their social backgrounds, how they were recruited, selected, and educated, and obtained jobs; how they were paid, and their lifestyles and family life, as well as examining the evidence for what they did as leaders of worship, pastors and teachers, how their parishioners responded to them, and how they were supervised. Jacob concludes that, contrary to popular views, the clerical profession was much better organized, educated, and supervised than the medical and legal professions during this period. During the 'age of reform' from the 1780s to the 1830s, all the professions were criticized: Jacob suggests that the modest regulation and professional training introduced in the other learned professions in the 1830s only slowly brought them to the standard already achieved by the clerical profession.

The Long Eighteenth Century was the Age of Revolutions, including the first sexual revolution. In this era, sexual toleration began and there was a marked increase in the discussion of morality, extra-marital sex, pornography and same-sex relationships in both print and visual culture media. William Gibson and Joanne Begiato here consider the ways in which the Church of England dealt with sex and sexuality in this period. Despite the backdrop of an increasingly secularising society, religion continued to play a key role in politics, family life and wider society and the eighteenth-century Church was still therefore a considerable force, especially in questions of morality. This book integrates themes of gender and sexuality into a broader understanding of the Church of England in the eighteenth century. It shows that, rather than distancing itself from sex through diminishing teaching, regulation and punishment, the Church not only paid attention to it, but its attitudes to sex and sexuality were at the core of society's reactions to the first sexual revolution.

'Workplace chaplaincy' is the term that covers the church's outreach to the economy which today takes many forms and is supported by many local ecumenical partnerships. Chaplains can be found in supermarkets, at airports, in industry, among glittering tower blocks in business districts. Malcolm Torry tells the stories of the movement's origins, starting with the first record of priests in a place of work - on board naval ships in the reign of Henry VIII. He traces the established church's often tenuous relationship with the working classes and the profound changes in that relationship that occurred during World War 1 and 2, the subsequent growth of industrial mission, and today's challenge of an increasingly secularized society. Published in partnership with the Industrial Mission Association, this is a theological handbook for all involved in contemporary mission among people at work, or in any way concerned about how faith impacts on the economy, workplace ethics, unemployment, recession and other key issues affecting peoples' lives today.

This is a survey of the history of the 'Book of Common Prayer', and its descendants throughout the world. The guide shows how a classic text for worship and devotion has become the progenitor of an entire family of religious resources that have had an influence far beyond their use in Anglican churches.