While Elizabeth I would attempt to get her clergy to conform, many of these dissenters would continue to spread their ideas about church government and worship, attracting more followers
Trang 1episcopacy and an established state church They began
to separate themselves from the Church of England and
have their own private meetings
While Elizabeth I would attempt to get her clergy
to conform, many of these dissenters would continue
to spread their ideas about church government and
worship, attracting more followers In 1620, a group
of these dissenters would sail to America on the
May-flower and settle in New England in attempt to find
reli-gious freedom in the New World Consequently, they
transplanted their own religious dissent to America
profoundly shaping both early American religion and
national identify in the process
During the time of the English Civil War (1642–51)
and the interregnum (1649–60), the dissenters seized
power and abolished the Church of England They
began to practice iconoclasm, destroying churches and
stained glass and imprisoning many of the Anglican
bishops Parliament was now the head of the Church
of England and it quickly instituted a more
presby-terian form of church government The Westminster
Assembly now became the sole and permanent
com-mittee dedicated to the reform of the English Church
In May of 1660, Charles II was restored to the
throne of England from exile in France He made
attempts to ensure some sort of religious toleration with
his Declaration of Indulgence However, the now mostly
Anglican Parliament had forced him to withdraw this
measure Instead they passed what is known as the
Clar-endon code, which established Anglicanism as the true
state religion of England and made overt threats toward
any that might not conform
The Test Act of 1673 required all persons in civil or
military offices to subscribe to the oaths of supremacy and
allegiance and to affirm that they did not believe in the
doctrine of transubstantiation Furthermore, they had to
receive the sacrament of the Anglican Church within three
months after admittance to office Eventually, in 1689,
Parliament passed the Toleration Act, which allowed the
English people to practice whatever religion they desired
so long as they were trinitarian Protestants This act
how-ever did not suspend any of their civil disabilities that
went along with their dissenting religion The Test Act,
which was expanded in 1678, was not suspended until
1828 In 1829, Parliament passed the Roman Catholic
Relief Act, which began to give freedom to Roman
Cath-olics to practice their religion freely for the first time since
before the Reformation
Consequently, many of the dissenters in English
reli-gious history survive in present-day Christian
denomina-tions Many of these are now known as “Free Churches.”
Some of these are Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregation-alists, Methodists, Quakers, and Moravians
See also Stuart, House of (England)
Further reading: Burrage, Champlin The Early English
Dissenters: Dissent and Nonconformity Paris, AR: Baptist Standard Bearer, 2000; Collinson, Patrick The Religion of the Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559–1625
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; Edwards, David L
Christian England, Vol 2: From the Reformation to the 18th Century Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1983; Haigh, Christopher English Reformations
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993; Spufford, Margaret,
ed The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520–1725 Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995
T W Booth
divine faith in Europe
Between 1730 and 1760, western Europe experienced
a revivalist movement that advocated acceptance of the divine faith doctrine This movement later came to be known as the First Great Awakening The title was used
to differentiate this first rise in evangelical revivalism from the second wave of religious fervor that surfaced between
1800 and 1801, which become known as the Second Great Awakening During the First Great Awakening, the acceptance of the divine faith doctrine in Europe was most prevalent in England, Scotland, Wales, and
Germa-ny, although the movement also received a good deal of attention in Ireland, Holland, Switzerland, Sweden, and France At the same time, a similar but separate revivalist movement took place across the Atlantic in the United States Despite the common factors in the teachings of the various evangelists, the divine faith movement was not a single movement but a large number of highly indi-vidualistic movements that surfaced around the Western Hemisphere In addition to Anglicans and dissenters in England, the Protestant sects that endorsed divine faith included Calvinists and Arminians in England, Presbyte-rians in Scotland, Lutherans and Pietists in Saxony, and Puritan Congregationalists in New England
All proponents of the divine faith movement advo-cated a strong faith in the divine will of God Most of them taught that conversion must come from a heartfelt acceptance of Christian teachings rather than from a blind acceptance of religious dogma or from confessional con-formity Advocates taught that God was actively involved
in shaping history and that he was constantly guiding the