Rowan Strong

In Anglicanism, Empire and Missions Rowan Strong offers fresh insights into Christian missions, illuminating both large-scale movements and smaller, local initiatives. Tracing the origins of Anglican missions back to the foundation of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in 1701, the work explores their evolution—from a transatlantic context in the eighteenth century to a truly global presence within the expanding British Empire of the nineteenth century. Contemporary Anglophone mission historiography has often overlooked Anglican missionary endeavours during this period, instead privileging the activism of Evangelical missions. This volume redresses the balance, revealing the far-reaching influence of Anglican mission leaders and societies and restoring their rightful place in the broader history of Christian missions.

This volume looks at the religious dimensions of the nineteenth-century British and Irish emigration experience, examining the varieties of Christianity adhered to by most British and Irish emigrants in the nineteenth century and consequently taken to their new homes in British settler colonies. It examines a significant aspect of this emigration history that has been overlooked by scholars—the development of an international emigrants’ chaplaincy by the Church of England that ministered to Anglicans, Nonconformists, and others, including Scandinavians, Germans, Jews, and freethinkers. The volume uses the records of this emigrants’ chaplaincy, as well as the shipboard diaries kept by emigrants themselves to give them a voice in this history. Concentrating on the experiences of the emigrant voyages, an analysis is provided of the Christianity of these British and Irish emigrants as they travelled by ship to British colonies. Their ships were ‘floating villages’ that necessitated and facilitated religious encounters across denominational and even religious boundaries. The volume argues that the Church of England provided an emigrants’ ministry that had the greatest longevity, breadth, and international structure of any Church in the nineteenth century. It also explores the principal varieties of Christianity espoused by most British emigrants, and argues their religion was more central to their identity and, consequently, more significant in settler colonies than historians have hitherto accepted. In this way, emigrant Christianity and the Church of England’s emigrants’ chaplaincy made a major contribution to the development of a British world in settler colonies of the British Empire.

The Oxford Movement, initiating what is commonly called the Catholic Revival of the Church of England and of global Anglicanism more generally, has been a perennial subject of study by historians since its beginning in the 1830s. But the leader of the movement whose name was most associated with it during the nineteenth century, Edward Bouverie Pusey, has long been neglected by historical studies of the Anglican Catholic Revival. What attention has been paid to him by scholars has produced a largely negative picture of this complex man. This collection of essays seeks to redress the negative and marginalizing historiography of Pusey, in order to better understand both Pusey and his culture. The essays take Pusey’s contributions to the Oxford Movement and its theological thinking seriously; most significantly, they endeavour to understand Pusey on his own terms, rather than by comparison with Newman or Keble. This collection of essays is derived from a conference on ‘Edward Bouverie Pusey and the Catholic Revival’ held at Ascot Priory, England in September 2009. It was attended by scholars from Britain, Europe, the United States and Australia. Broadly, the aim was to resuscitate Pusey as a figure of importance in Oxford Movement studies, in keeping with his contemporary importance during the Movement itself. The essays rescue both Pusey’s personality and theology from scholarly marginality, and place him in the same prominent place within the Oxford Movement that he had during his lifetime. Together these essays represent an important step towards giving a more historically accurate view of Pusey. The essays do not subscribe to the hagiography of Liddon’s biography, nor do they exhibit the hostility typical of more recent works. Instead, the essays in the volume reveal Pusey as a serious theologian who had a significant impact on the Victorian period, both within the Oxford Movement and in wider areas of church politics and theology. This reassessment is important not merely to rehabilitate Pusey’s reputation, but also help contemporary understanding of the Oxford Movement, Anglicanism and British Christianity in the nineteenth century.

Known in naval slang as ‘sin-bosuns’, chaplains have served as an integral part of the Royal Australian Navy for a century. From Keith Mathieson, who supported his shipmates in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, to the first Australian navy chaplain to be killed in active service, George Stubbs on HMAS Sydney, this book profiles chaplains serving at sea and in naval establishments, both in war and peace. Rowan Strong examines the chaplains’ role as religious ministers, counsellors, and clergy prepared to challenge naval culture from a religious standpoint. He also looks at the forces of change, including denominational rivalry and cooperation, tensions between religious and military roles, and shifts in Australian society. Royal Australian Navy chaplains have sought to serve both God and country; this book reveals the difficulties and successes of that task.

Explores the important topic of the way the Church of England constructed a public discourse about the British Empire. Between 1700 and 1850 the Church of England was the among the most powerful and influential religious, social, and political forces in Britain. This was also a momentous time for the British Empire, during which it developed and then lost the North American colonies, extended into India, and settled the colonies of Australia and New Zealand. Public understanding of this expanding empire was influentially created and promulgated by the Church of England as a consequence of its missionary engagement with these colonies, and its role in providing churches for British settlers. Rowan Strong examines how that Anglican Christian understanding of the British Empire shaped the identities both of the people living in British colonies in North America, Bengal, Australia, and New Zealand during this period - including colonists, indigenous peoples, and Negro slaves - and of the English in Britain.

Episcopalianism in nineteenth‐century Scotland is not an institutional history of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Rather, it seeks to identify various sub‐groups and cultures of Scottish Episcopalians in the nineteenth century and what was important to their religious identity. In addition, it concentrates on how these groups of Episcopalians responded to the emerging industrial and urban society of Scotland at the time. Included among Scottish Episcopalians are Episcopalian Gaels in the Highlands; North‐east crofters, farmers and fisherfolk; urban Episcopalians; and aristocratic men and women. An additional major theme of the book is Episcopalianism and Scottish identity during the nineteenth century, examined through the various indigenous traditions that emerged in eighteenth‐century Episcopalianism and the influence of Anglicization.