David Hempton

"David Hempton looks at evangelicalism through the lens of well-known individuals who once embraced the evangelical tradition, but later repudiated it. The author recounts the faith journeys of nine creative artists, social reformers, and public intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries"--Publisher description.

Nine Portraits of Faith and Doubt

Evangelical Disenchantment

Hugh McLeod

In the early twenty-first century it had become a cliché that there was a "God Gap" between a more religious United States and a more secular Europe. The apparent religious differences between the United States and western Europe continue to be a focus of intense and sometimes bitter debate between three of the main schools in the sociology of religion. According to the influential "Secularization Thesis," secularization has been an integral part of the processes of modernization in the Western world since around 1800. For proponents of this thesis, the United States appears as an anomaly and they accordingly give considerable attention to explaining why it is different. For other sociologists, however, the apparently high level of religiosity in the USA provides a major argument in their attempts to refute the Thesis. Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World provides a systematic comparison between the religious histories of the United States and western European countries from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century, noting parallels as well as divergences, examining their causes and especially highlighting change over time. This is achieved by a series of themes which seem especially relevant to this agenda, and in each case the theme is considered by two scholars. The volume examines whether American Christians have been more innovative, and if so how far this explains the apparent "God Gap." It goes beyond the simple American/European binary to ask what is "American" or "European" in the Christianity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in what ways national or regional differences outweigh these commonalities.

Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World

Methodism was one of the most important religious movements in the English-speaking world in the 18th and 19th centuries. It helped reshape the old denominational order in the British Isles and North America and deeply affected the lives of many millions of people. Although taking account of broader patterns of growth, the focus of this book is Methodism in the British Isles in the period 1750-1900. It begins with a discussion of why Methodism grew when and where it did and the nature of the Methodist experience for those who embraced it. The distinctive religious beliefs and practices of Methodism appealed mostly to women and men of the lower-middle and working classes, and its harsh disciplines and tender pieties have been closely related to many other important questions such as class formation, increased political consciousness, the rise of industrial capitalism and market economies, and the growth of religious pluralism.

Methodism and Popular Religion C. 1750-1900

The Religion of the People

Hempton explores the rise of Methodism from its unpromising origins as a religious society within the Church of England in the 1730s to a major international religious movement by the 1880s.

Empire of the Spirit

Methodism

Originally published in 1984, this book charts the political and social consequences of Methodist expansion in the first century of its existence. While the relationship between Methodism and politics is the central subject of the book a number of other important themes are also developed. The Methodist revival is placed in the context of European pietism, enlightenment thought forms, 18th century popular culture, and Wesley’s theological and political opinions. Throughout the book Methodism is treated on a national scale, although the regional, chronological and religious diversity of Methodist belief and practice is also emphasized.

David Hempton

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