Anglican Enlightenment: Orientalism, Religion and Politics in England and its Empire, 1648–1715 (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History)
Cambridge University Press, 5/12/2015
EAN 9781107073685, ISBN10: 1107073685
Hardcover, 357 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
This is an original interpretation of the early European Enlightenment and the religious conflicts that rocked England and its empire under the later Stuarts. In a series of vignettes that move between Europe and North Africa, William J. Bulman shows that this period witnessed not a struggle for and against new ideas and greater freedoms, but a battle between several novel schemes for civil peace. Bulman considers anew the most apparently conservative force in post-Civil War English history: the conformist leadership of the Church of England. He demonstrates that the church's historical scholarship, social science, pastoral care and political practice amounted not to a culturally backward spectacle of intolerance, but to a campaign for stability drawn from the frontiers of erudition and globalization. In seeking to sever the link between zeal and chaos, the church and its enemies were thus united in an Enlightenment project, but bitterly divided over what it meant in practice.
Introduction
from learning to liberalism?
Part I. Foundations
1. Literature and violence
2. Empires, churches and republics of the globe
Part II. Culture
3. Histories
4. Universals
Part III. Religion
5. The propagation of the faith
6. The worship of God
Part IV. Politics
7. Restoration
8. Revolution
Conclusion
from pastor to spectator
Select bibliography
Index.