Overview

The period 1689-1901 was 'the golden age' of the sermon in Britain. It was the best selling printed work and dominated the print trade until the mid-nineteenth century. Sermons were highly influential in religious and spiritual matters, but they also played important roles in elections and politics, science and ideas, and campaigns for reform. Sermons touched the lives of ordinary people and formed a dominant part of their lives. Preachers attracted huge crowds and the popular demand for sermons was never higher. Sermons were also taken by missionaries and clergy across the British empire, so that preaching was integral to the process of imperialism and shaped the emerging colonies and dominions. The form that sermons took varied widely, and this enabled preaching to be adopted and shaped by every denomination, so that in this period most religious groups could lay claim to a sermon style. The pulpit naturally lent itself to controversy, and consequently sermons lay at the heart of numerous religious arguments.Drawing on the latest research by leading sermon scholars, this handbook accesses historical, theological, rhetorical, literary and linguistic studies to demonstrate the interdisciplinary strength of the field of sermon studies and to show the centrality of sermons to religious life in this period.

Full Product Details

Author:   Keith A. Francis ,  William Gibson
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 17.30cm , Height: 3.70cm , Length: 24.60cm
Weight:   1.118kg
ISBN:  

9780198709770

ISBN 10:   0198709773
Pages:   680
Publication Date:   15 October 2014
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

I: Introductory Essays 1: William Gibson: The British Sermon 1689-1901: Quantities, Performance, and Culture 2: Keith A. Francis: Sermons: Themes and Developments II: Sermons: Communities, Cultures and Communication 3: Jeffrey S. Chamberlain: Parish Preaching in the Long Eighteenth Century 4: Frances Knight: Parish Preaching in the Victorian Era: The Village Sermon 5: Martin Hewitt: Preaching from the platform 6: Michael Graves: The British Quaker Sermon, 1689-1901 7: Bob Tennant: The Sermons of the Eighteenth-Century Evangelicals 8: Geoffrey Scott: Sermons in British Catholicism to the Restoration of the Hierarchy 9: Ann Matheson: Preaching in the Churches of Scotland 10: Irene Whelan: The Sermon and Political Controversy in Ireland, 1800-1850 11: John Morgan-Guy: Sermons in Wales in the Established Church 12: D. Densil Morgan: Preaching in the Vernacular: the Welsh sermon, 1689-1901 13: Andrew Pink: Order and Uniformity, Decorum, and Taste: Sermons Preached at the Anniversary Meeting of the Three Choirs, 1720-1800 III: Occasional Sermons 14: Pasi Ihalainen: The Sermon, Court and Parliament 1689-1789 15: James J. Caudle: The Defence of Georgian Britain, the Anti-Jacobite Sermon 1715-1746 16: Warren Johnston: Preaching, National Salvation, Victories and Thanksgiving, 1689-1800 17: Grayson Ditchfield: Sermons in the Age of the American and French Revolutions 18: William Gibson: This Itching Ear d Age : Visitation Sermons and Charges in the Eighteenth Century 19: Colin Haydon: Consecration Sermons 20: Penny Pritchard: The Protestant Funeral Sermon in England, 1688-1800 21: John Wolffe: The Victorian Funeral Sermon IV: Sermons, Controversies and the Development of Ideas 22: Bob Tennant: Hard Labour: Institutional Benevolence and the Development of National Education 23: Robert J. Surridge and Keith A. Francis: Sermons for End Times: Evangelicalism, Romanticism, and Apocalypse in Britain 24: Nigel Aston: Rationalism, the Enlightenment, and Sermons 25: Jeremy Morris: Preaching the Oxford Movement 26: Melissa Wilkinson: Sermons and the Catholic Restoration 27: Keith A. Francis: Paley to Darwin: Natural Theology versus Science in Victorian Sermons 28: Gerald Parsons: Preaching the Broad Church Gospel: The Natal Sermons of Bishop John William Colenso V Sermons: Missions and Ideas of Empire 29: Robert G. Ingram: From Barbarism to Civility, from Darkness to Light : Preaching Empire as Sacred History 30: Rowan Strong: Eighteenth-Century Mission Sermons 31: Joanna Cruickshank: The Sermon in the British Colonies 32: Andrew Sneddon: Church of Ireland Missions to Roman Catholics c.1700-1800 33: Jessica A. Sheetz-Nguyen: Go ye therefore and teach all nations : Evangelical and Mission Sermons, the Imperial Stage VI: Sermons and Literature 34: Kirstie Blair: The Poet-Preachers 35: Stephen Prickett: Tradition Preaching and the Gothic Revival 36: Linda Gill VII: Conclusion: The Sermon and the Victorian Novel 37: Keith A. Francis: Sermon Studies: Major Issues and Future Directions

Reviews

the contributors have succeeded in demonstrating how an apparently commonplace and ephemeral aspect of the social and religious culture of Britain offers important insights into how that culture understood its own purposes and place in the world. * Charles W. A. Prior, Journal of Church and State * Welcome to the expanding world of Sermon Studies. In this mighty have history, analysis and critical reflection upon the sermon as a distinctive, art form throughout two significant centuries of English history. * William H. Williamson, Theology * It is a magisterial work in every sense. It is superbly presented with more than 30 contributors; it contains all you could possibly want to know about the sermon during the golden age of church going [...] an outstanding work of accessible scholarship, richly annotated and elegantly printed. * Michael Wheeler, Church Times * It is a magisterial work in every sense. It is superbly presented with more than 30 contributors; it contains all you could possibly want to know about the sermon during the golden age of church going. * Peter Watkins, the Reader *

It is a magisterial work in every sense. It is superbly presented with more than 30 contributors; it contains all you could possibly want to know about the sermon during the golden age of church going. Peter Watkins, the Reader It is a magisterial work in every sense. It is superbly presented with more than 30 contributors; it contains all you could possibly want to know about the sermon during the golden age of church going [...] an outstanding work of accessible scholarship, richly annotated and elegantly printed. Michael Wheeler, Church Times Welcome to the expanding world of Sermon Studies. In this mighty have history, analysis and critical reflection upon the sermon as a distinctive, art form throughout two significant centuries of English history. William H. Williamson, Theology the contributors have succeeded in demonstrating how an apparently commonplace and ephemeral aspect of the social and religious culture of Britain offers important insights into how that culture understood its own purposes and place in the world. Charles W. A. Prior, Journal of Church and State

It is a magisterial work in every sense. It is superbly presented with more than 30 contributors; it contains all you could possibly want to know about the sermon during the golden age of church going [...] an outstanding work of accessible scholarship, richly annotated and elegantly printed. Michael Wheeler, Church Times Welcome to the expanding world of Sermon Studies. In this mighty have history, analysis and critical reflection upon the sermon as a distinctive, art form throughout two significant centuries of English history. William H. Williamson, Theology

Author Information

Keith Francis is a historian of religion in Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and is particularly interested in the development of the biological sciences and their impact on nineteenth-century Christianity. He is the Executive Secretary of the American Society of Church History and a visiting research fellow at Oxford Brookes University. William Gibson is a historian of religion in Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he has written widely on the Church of England in this period and is particularly interested in its role in politics and the emergence of an enlightenment culture. He is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford Brookes University and Director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History. He is co-editor of Wesley and Methodist Studies and reviews editor of Archives (the journal of the British Records Association). In 2011 he was visiting research fellow at Yale University. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Association and of the Royal Society of Arts.

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