Table of Contents

PART I: 'THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH': THE CRISIS OF DISSENT
1: 'The God of the hills': The impact of Romanticism
2: 'Destructive of the authority of divine revelation': Genesis, geology, and evolution
3: 'The ground on which Rational Christianity may firmly take its stand': higher criticism and the Unitarians
4: 'An inspired communication from the Deity ... Or ... Nothing': the dilemma of Evangelical Dissenters
5: 'The seal and servant of Christianity': the Spiritualist alternative
6: 'An easy good - natured God': the collapse of Calvinism
7: 'The hateful mystery': the eclipse of eternal punishment
8: 'The sceptical tendencies of modern times': the isolation of Spurgeon
9: 'The heresies of the Baptist Union': the Down Grade
10: 'A conspiracy to undermine our holy faith': the liberal triumph
PART II: 'THE HUB AND FOUNT OF SOCIAL LIFE': THE LIBERALIZATION OF DISSENT
11: Church membership and chapel attendance: the consequences of the crisis
12: 'Conversion is not necessary to regeneration': the failure of recruitment
13: Nonconformity's shrinking constituency: the evidence of the dissenting registers
14: 'Influential families lost to conformity': the flight of the bourgeoisie
15: The failure of success: the loss of the poor
16: The 'most spiritually destitute and degraded': missions to the poor
17: 'Diversity of opinion no bar to Christian communion': the relaxation of discipline
18: 'We must not leave Satan to provide the "recreations of life"': the problem of pleasure
19: The 'social and intellectual well-being of our members': the institutional church
20: 'A liberal education': culture without anarchy
21: 'Winning souls' or 'unlimited speculation'?: colleges and universities
22: Frugality and over work: pastors and preachers
23: 'The future rests with the Free Churches': free church union and the Welsh revival
PART III: 'WHAT IS MORALLY WRONG CAN NEVER BE POLITICALLY RIGHT': THE CONSCIENCE OF DISSENT
24: 'The largest and widest church ever established': the influence of George Dawson
25: 'Once bit, twice shy': the Forster Education Act
26: 'A torrent of gin and beer': the Nonconformist revolt and liberal defeat
27: 'The right of the people to judge for themselves': Bulgaria and Ireland
28: 'A Mutual Benefit Association': trade unionists and employers
29: Making 'men moral by act of parliament': personal redemption versus environmental reformation
30: 'To reconstruct the existing organization of society': from philanthropy to christian socialism and the new liberalism
31: 'A most astonishing opening, furnished by the providence of God': imperialism and the missionary conscience
32: 'The thunder of British guns': Armenia and the Boer War
33: 'The descendants of men like Oliver Cromwell': the Balfour Education Act and the liberal landslide
Index

About the Author

Michael Watts was Reader in Modern History at the University of Nottingham (1967-1998). He completed the text of his third volume of the Dissenters before he died in 2011. This volume subsequently has been lightly revised and a preface added by Professor David Bebbington.

Reviews

magnificent...The reader is dazzled by the amplitude of the research on which the book is based...This reviewer was gripped
*Quaker Studies*

Full of truly wonderful things.
*Martin Camroux, Journal for the History of Modern Theology 2017 Volume 24 Issue 2.*

Watts's work will never be superseded ... [his] comprehensiveness is a marvel ... What will confer permanent value on this trilogy is the author's painstaking exactitude with statistical analysis ... Not only did Watts generate most of this data himself; he even rechecked the results of previous scholars.
*Timothy Larsen, Times Literary Supplement*

every whit as worthy as its predecessors ... It is excellent ... to have this wide ranging, sophisticated and wholly admirable study of the English and Welsh Dissenters' late Victorian high-noon ... [it] will be indispensable for those who wish to know about the 'enthralling' story of English and Welsh Dissent.
*Professor D. Densil Morgan, Reviews in History*

The concluding volume of this fine trilogy is comprehensive in scope, persuasive in argument, and charitable in tone. It will be an essential point of departure for all students of nineteenth-century church and society for many years to come.
*Martin Wellings, Wesley and Methodist Studies*

excellent
*Robert Strivens, London Theological Seminary, Churchman*

This is a formidably learned book in which Watts shows a masterly knowledge of his subject ... I recommend this work
*Clare Thomas, Congregational History Society Magazine*