The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume III: The Nineteenth Century

Timothy Larsen and Mark Noll are to be warmly congratulated for persuading Oxford University Press to complement its five-volume Oxford History of Anglicanism with a parallel series on Protestant Dissenting Traditions. The present substantial book is the first of the series to appear, expertly edited by Timothy Larsen and Michael Ledger-Lomas, of King's College, London. Their team of twenty distinguished contributors, drawn from North America and Great Britain, cover the subject in five sections. In Part One of the volume, traditions within Britain and Ireland are considered, with chapters on Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, Unitarians and Presbyterians, Methodists and Holiness, and Restorationists and New Movements. In Part Two a similar approach is taken to traditions outside Britain and Ireland (mostly North America, with a concluding chapter by Joanna Cruickshank on ‘Colonial Contexts’). In Part Three, Mark Noll explores the Bible and scriptural interpretation, David Bebbington discusses theology, and Robert Ellison draws...