Manchester University Press Church Polity and Politics in the British Atlantic World, c. 1635–66 (Politics, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain)

Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic world addresses how mid-seventeenth-century debates on the government and order of the Church related to the political crisis of the era from a transatlantic perspective. The volume explores arguments concerning the relationship between church, state and people, the nature of the various post-Reformation settlements in the British Atlantic and how they influenced each other, as well as central and local responses to ecclesiastical upheaval. It is one of the first collections of scholarly essays to focus on the topic of church polity and its relation to politics during a critical period of transatlantic history. Chapters cover the internal and factional debates over episcopacy, Presbyterianism, congregationalism and Erastianism. The volume also explores local dimensions of the crisis in the post-Reformation British Atlantic, with separate chapters looking at Wales, the north-west of England, Scotland and the Massachusetts Bay colony. Church polity and politics in the British Atlantic world will be of interest to scholars and students of the British revolutions as well as those interested in the history and theology of the Church and of the early dissenting traditions. The book’s wide range of topics will also appeal to readers interested in early modern history as well as the historical theology of early modern Protestantism.