The Church and Empire

This volume of Studies in Church History explores the close relationships between the Christian Church and empires and imperial power.

Stewart J. Brown (Edited by), Charlotte Methuen (Edited by), Andrew Spicer (Edited by)

9781108473798, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 June 2018

436 pages
22.3 x 14.2 x 2.9 cm, 0.64 kg

'The Church and Empire', the theme of Studies in Church History, 54, reflects the reality that from its beginnings, the Christian Church has had close, often symbiotic, relationships with empires and imperial power. Initially the Church engaged with the Roman Empire, subsequently in Europe with the Carolingian, Anglo-Norman, Genoese, Venetian and Holy Roman Empires, and later - through the Church's global expansion with European empires in the Americas, Africa and Asia - the Spanish, Dutch, French and British empires, and the imperial structures it encountered there. Bringing together the work of twenty-four historians, this volume explores the relations of churches and empires, and Christian conceptions of empire, in the ancient, medieval, early modern and modern periods, as well as the role of empire in the global expansion of Christianity.

Introduction Stewart J. Brown
1. Towards a spiritual empire: Christian exegesis of the universal census at the time of Jesus's birth Tiziana Faitini
2. The 'servant of God': divine favour and instrumentality under Constantine, 318–25 Andrew J. Pottenger
3. Imperium and the City of God: Augustine on Church and empire Gillian Clark
4. The popes as rulers of Rome in the aftermath of empire, 476–769 Rosamond McKitterick
5. Empire, ethnic election and exegesis in the Opus Caroli (Libri Carolini) (President's prize) Conor O'Brien
6. Super gentes et regna: papal 'empire' in the later eleventh and twelfth centuries Benedict G. E. Wiedemann
7. Emperor and church in the last centuries of Byzantium Ruth Macrides
8. An English bishop afloat in an Irish Sea: John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, 1552–3 Stephen N. Tong
9. Roman Imperium and the Restoration church Jacqueline Rose
10. The Episcopal Church, the Roman Empire and the royal supremacy in Restoration Scotland Andrew Carter
11. Concepts of Mission in Scottish Presbyterianism: the SSPCK, the Highlands and Britain's American colonies, 1709–40 Clare Loughlin
12. Christianity and empire: the Catholic mission in late imperial China R. Po-Chia Hsia
13. Providential empire? The established Church of England and the nineteenth-century British Empire in India (presidential address) Stewart J. Brown
14. Special worship in the British Empire: from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries Joseph Hardwick and Philip Williamson
15. Queen Adelaide and the extension of Anglicanism in Malta Nicholas Dixon
16. Claiming the land: the Church Missionary Society and architecture in the Arctic (Kennedy Prize) Emily Turner
17. Anglican emigrant chaplaincy in the British Empire and beyond, c. 1840–1900 Rowan Strong
18. Sisters and brothers abroad: gender, race, empire and Anglican missionary reformism in Hawai'i and the Pacific, 1858–75 Steven S. Maughan
19. Ultramontate efforts in the Ottoman Empire during the 1860s and 1870s Maryam Kartashyan
20. 'Britishers and Protestants': Protestantism and imperial British identities in Britain, Canada and Australia from the 1880s to the 1920s Géraldine Vaughan
21. Englishness, empire and nostalgia: a heterodox religious community's appeal in the inter-war years Jane Shaw
22. A triangular conflict: the Nyasaland Protectorate and two missions, 1915–33 David Thompson
23. Social Anglicanism and Empire: C. F. Andrews's Christian socialism Philip Lockley.

Subject Areas: Christian mission & evangelism [HRCX7], Church history [HRCC2], Christianity [HRC], History of religion [HRAX], History [HB]