The English Soul

Faith of a Nation

Peter Ackroyd

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9781836390947
  9781789148459
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789148848
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The English Soul portrays the spirit and nature of English Christianity as it has developed over the last 1,400 years. As the predominant faith of the people, Christianity has been the reflection, perhaps the embodiment, of the English soul. This fascinating new history argues that Christianity has been the anchoring and defining doctrine of England, while accepting respectfully that other powerful and significant faiths have also influenced the religious sensibility of this nation.
Peter Ackroyd surveys the lives and faith of the most important figures of English Christianity, from the Venerable Bede to C. S. Lewis, exploring the mysticism of Julian of Norwich and William Blake, the tumultuous years of the Reformation, the emergence of the English Bible, the evangelical tradition, including John Wesley, and the contemporary contest between tradition, revival and atheism. This is an essential, comprehensive and accessible survey of English Christianity.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• AUTHOR’S NOTE
• One Religion as History: The Venerable Bede (673–735)
• Two Religion as Revelation: Julian of Norwich (1343–1416)
• Three Religion as Reform: John Wyclif (c. 1328–1384)
• Four Religion as Reformation: William Tyndale (c. 1494–1536), Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), John Foxe (1516–1587)
• Five Religion as Orthodoxy: Richard Hooker (1554–1600)
• Six Religion as Opposition: Thomas Cartwright (1535–1603), Robert Browne (c. 1550–1633), Henry Barrow (c. 1550–1593)
• Seven Religion as Sermon: Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626), John Donne (1572–1631)
• Eight Religion as Scripture: The Authorized Version (1611)
• Nine Religion as Poetry: George Herbert (1593–1633)
• Ten Religion as Order: William Laud (1573–1645)
• Eleven Religion as Sect: Thomas Helwys (1575–1616) and the Baptists, John Lilburne (1615–1657) and the Levellers, Gerrard Winstanley (1609–1676) and the Diggers, Abiezer Coppe (1619–1672?) and the Ranters, Lodowicke Muggleton (1609–1698) and the Muggletonians
• Twelve Religion as Transformation: George Fox (1624–1691)
• Thirteen Religion as Experience: John Bunyan (1628–1688)
• Fourteen Religion as Revival: John Wesley (1703–1791)
• Fifteen Religion as Individual: William Blake (1757–1827)
• Sixteen Religion as Established
• Seventeen Religion as Battle: Catherine Booth (1829–1890), William Booth (1829–1912)
• Eighteen Religion as Thought: John Henry Newman (1801–1890)
• Nineteen Religion as Evangelical: Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892)
• Twenty Atheism as Religion: Charles Bradlaugh (1833–1891), Annie Besant (1847–1933), Richard Dawkins (1941–)
• Twenty-One Religion as Argument: G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), C. S. Lewis (1898–1963)
• Twenty-Two Religion as Contemporary: Evangelicals, Pentecostalists, Charismatics
• Twenty-Three Religion as Theology: John A. T. Robinson (1919–1983), John Hick (1922–2012), Don Cupitt (1934–)
• Further Reading
• Acknowledgements
• Photo Acknowledgements
• Index